disturbance, I will call my neighbors, and you shall be beaten yourselves, and that would be an indignity for two such gentlemen."

"Why! he is laughing at us," cried Coconnas, in a rage.

"Grégoire, my arquebuse," said the host, with the same voice with which he would have said, "Give these gentleman a chair."

"Trippe del papa!" cried Coconnas, drawing his sword; "warm up, Monsieur de la Mole."

"No, no; for while we warm up, our supper will get cold."

"What, you think"—cried Coconnas.

"That Monsieur de la Belle Étoile is right; only he does not know how to treat his guests, especially when they are gentlemen, for instead of brutally saying, 'Gentlemen, I do not want you,' it would have been better if he had said, 'Enter, gentlemen'—at the same time reserving to himself the right to charge in his bill, master's room, so much; servants' room, so much."

With these words, La Mole gently pushed by the landlord, who was just on the point of taking his arquebuse, and entered with Coconnas.

"Well," said Coconnas, "I am sorry to sheathe my sword before I have ascertained that it is as sharp as that rascal's larding-needle."

"Patience, my dear friend, patience," said La Mole. "All the inns in Paris are full of gentlemen come to attend the King of Navarre's marriage or attracted by the approaching war with Flanders; we should not find another lodging; besides, perhaps it is the custom at Paris to receive strangers in this manner."

"By Heaven! how patient you are, Monsieur de la Mole!" muttered Coconnas, curling his red mustache with rage and hurling the lightning of his eyes on the landlord. "But let the scoundrel take care; for if his cooking be bad, if his bed be hard, his wine less than three years in bottle, and his waiter be not as pliant as a reed"—

"There! there! my dear gentleman!" said the landlord, whetting his knife on a strap, "you may make yourself easy; you are in the land of Cocagne."

Then in a low tone he added:

"These are some Huguenots; traitors have grown so insolent since the marriage of their Béarnais with Mademoiselle Margot!"

Then, with a smile that would have made his guests 

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