t
have been more dumbfoundered.

Meanwhile, the blows and cries were redoubled. Lotche, recovering
her coolness, had plucked up courage to speak.

"Who is there?"

"It is I! I! I!"

"Who are you?"

"The Commissary Passauf!"

The Commissary Passauf! The very man whose office it had been
contemplated to suppress for ten years. What had happened, then?
Could the Burgundians have invaded Quiquendone, as they did in
the fourteenth century? No event of less importance could have so
moved Commissary Passauf, who in no degree yielded the palm to
the burgomaster himself for calmness and phlegm.

On a sign from Van Tricasse--for the worthy man could not have
articulated a syllable--the bar was pushed back and the door
opened.

Commissary Passauf flung himself into the antechamber. One would
have thought there was a hurricane.

"What's the matter, Monsieur the commissary?" asked Lotche, a
brave woman, who did not lose her head under the most trying
circumstances.

"What's the matter!" replied Passauf, whose big round eyes
expressed a genuine agitation. "The matter is that I have just
come from Doctor Ox's, who has been holding a reception, and that
there--"

[Illustration: I have just come from Doctor Ox's]

"There?"

"There I have witnessed such an altercation as--Monsieur the
burgomaster, they have been talking politics!"

"Politics!" repeated Van Tricasse, running his fingers through
his wig.

"Politics!" resumed Commissary Passauf, "which has not been done
for perhaps a hundred years at Quiquendone. Then the discussion
got warm, and the advocate, Andre Schut, and the doctor,
Dominique Custos, became so violent that it may be they will call
each other out."

"Call each other out!" cried the counsellor. "A duel! A duel at
Quiquendone! And what did Advocate Schut and Doctor Gustos say?"

"Just this: 'Monsieur advocate,' said the doctor to his
adversary, 'you go too far, it seems to me, and you do not take
sufficient care to control your words!'"

The Burgomaster Van Tricasse clasped his hands--the counsellor
turned pale and let his lantern fall--the commissary shook his
head. That a phrase so evidently irritating should be pronounced
by two of the principal men in the country!

"This Doctor Custos," muttered Van Tricasse, "is decidedly a
dangerous man--a hare-brained fellow! Come, gentlemen!"

On this, Counsellor Niklausse and the commissary accompanied the
burgomaster into the parlour.

CH