He looked at her sternly a moment, then pushed her from him.
“For supper, the best in the house!” he called after her, and turned to arrange for the disposition of his men and their prisoner.
By-and-by the aubergiste came to conduct us to table. As we went thither, Crépin stopped, took the girl by the chin, and looked into her wet inflamed eyes. If the prospect of good fare exhilarated him, I will say, also, for his credit, that I believe he had a kindly nature.
“For the future,” he said, “be discreet and make a study to command your nerves. In these days one must look on life through the little window of the lunette.”
We found our forestaller (who, by the way, had returned no answer to Crépin’s polite message) established in the eating-room when we entered it. He was a coarse, blotched ruffian, thick and overbearing, and he stared at us insolently as he lay sprawled over a couple of chairs.
“So, thou wouldst share my supper?” he cried, in a rumbling, vibrant voice. “Lie down under the table, citizen, and thou shalt have a big plate of scraps when once my belly is satisfied.”
Crépin paused near the threshold. I tingled with secret laughter to watch the bludgeoning of these two parvenus. But my respected chief had the advantage of an acquired courtesy.
“You honour me beyond my expectations,” he said. “But, if I were to break the dish over the citizen’s face, the scraps would fall the sooner.”
The other scrambled to his feet with a furious grimace.
“Canaille!” he shouted (it was curious that I never heard an upstart but would apply this term in a quarrel to those of his own kidney)—“Scum! pigwash! Do you know my name, my office, my reputation? God’s-blood! I’ve a mind to have you roasted in a fat hog’s skin and served for the first course!”