"Then what do you think they will do with me?"
"Wait, and find out!" returned the soldier roughly, and the mountebank spoke no more for some time; held his head lower, until, regarding him, his guardian must needs laugh. "Here's a craven-hearted fellow! Well, if you really want to know, they'll probably lock you up for the night with the rest of rag-tag," indicating the other prisoners, a short distance ahead, "in the cellar, or almonry, or auberge des voleurs; and in the morning, if you're lucky and the Governor has time to attend to such as you, it may be you'll escape with a few stripes and a warning."
"The auberge des voleurs!—the thieves' inn!" said the man. "What is that?"
"Bah! You want to know too much! If now your legs only moved as fast as your tongue—" And the speaker completed the sentence with a significant jog on the other's shoulder. Whereupon the mountebank quickened his footsteps, once more ceased his questioning. It was the soldier who had not yet spoken, but who had been pondering a good deal on the way up, who next broke the silence.
"How did it end, Monsieur Mountebank?—the scene with the devil, I mean."
The man who had begun to breathe hard, as one not accustomed to climbing, or wearied by a long pilgrimage to the Mount, at the question ventured to stop and rest, with a hand on the granite balustrade of the little platform they had just reached. "In the death of the peasant, and a comic chorus of frogs," he answered.
"A comic chorus!" said the soldier. "That must be very amusing."
"It is," the mountebank said, at the same time studying, from where he stood, different parts of the Mount with cautious, sidelong looks; "but my poor frogs!—all torn! trampled!"
"Well, well!" said the other not unkindly. "You can mend them when you get out."
"'When!' If I only knew when that would be! What if I should have to stay here like some of the others?—pour être oublié!—to be forgotten?"