The personage was also of a portliness, and the collision had knocked the wind out of him. He leaned panting against the wall. As he scanned M. Étienne's open countenance and princely dress his alarm vanished.
"It is unseemly to go about on a night like this without a lantern," he said with asperity. "The municipality should forbid it. I shall certainly bring the matter up at the next sitting."
"Monsieur is a member of the Parliament?" M. Étienne asked with immense respect.
"I have that honour, monsieur," the little man replied, delighted to impress us, as he himself was impressed, by the sense of his importance.
"Oh," said M. Étienne, with increasing solemnity, "perhaps monsieur had a hand in a certain decree of the 28th June?"
The little man began to look uneasy.
"There was, as monsieur says, a measure passed that day," he stammered.
"A rebellious and contumacious decree," M. Étienne rejoined, "most offensive to the general-duke." Whereupon he fingered his sword.
"Monsieur," the little deputy cried, "we meant no offence to his Grace, or to any true Frenchman. We but desire peace after all these years of blood. We were informed that his Grace was angry; yet we believed that even he will come to see the matter in a different light—"
"You have acted in a manner insulting to his Grace of Mayenne," M. Étienne repeated inexorably, and he glanced up the street and down the street to make sure the coast was clear. The wretched little deputy's teeth chattered.