"I am an old roadster. For the last twenty years I have crossed Gaul from end to end. Is the main road hazardous, I take the by-path. Is the plain risky, I go over the mountain. Is it dangerous to travel by day, I journey by night."
"And have you not been rifled a hundred times by those thievish Franks?"
"I am an old roadster, I tell you. Accordingly, before entering Britanny, I bravely donned a priest's robe, and painted on my pack a big cross with flames red as hell-fire. The Frankish thieves are as stupid as they are savage; they fear the devil, whom the bishops frighten them with in order to share with them the spoils of Gaul. They would not dare to attack me, taking me for a priest."
"Come, supper is ready—to table," said old Araim; and addressing his son's wife, who continued to give signs of preoccupation, he said to her in a low voice:
"What is the matter, Madalen? Are you still thinking of the Korrigans?"
"This stranger who disguises himself in the robe of a priest without being one will bring misfortune over our house. The tempest's fury seems to have redoubled since he came in."
It is an impossible thing to allay a mother's apprehensions once they are aroused.
The family and the guest sat down to table, ate and drank. The peddler drank and ate like a man to whom the road imparts a good appetite. The jaws did their ample duty; teeth and tongues played their parts well; the family was in good spirits. It is not every long winter's night that one has a peddler from Paris in his company.
"And what is going on in Paris, brave roadster?"
"The most satisfactory thing that I have seen in the city was the burying of the King of the cursed Franks!"