before the miraculous swarm of locusts. The stranger looked up.

   "Bring me another fowl, my Perigord."

   "Impossible, your excellency; the larder is stripped clean."

   "Another flitch of bacon, then."

   "Impossible, your highness; there is no more."

   "Well, then, wine!"

   The landlord brought one hundred and forty-four bottles. The courtier drank them all.

   "One may drink if one cannot eat," said the aristocratic stranger, good-humoredly.

   The innkeeper shuddered.

   The guest rose to depart. The innkeeper came slowly forward with his bill, to which he had covertly added the losses which he had suffered from the previous strangers.

   "Ah, the bill. Charge it."

   "Charge it! to whom?"

   "To the King," said the guest.

   "What! his Majesty?"

   "Certainly. Farewell, Perigord."

   The innkeeper groaned. Then he went out and took down his sign. Then remarked to his wife:—

   "I am a plain man, and don't understand politics. It seems, however, that the country is in a troubled state. Between his Eminence the Cardinal, his Majesty the King, and her Majesty the Queen, I am a ruined man."

   "Stay," said Dame Perigord, "I have an idea."

   "And that is—"

   "Become yourself a musketeer."

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