"All wrong, uncle mine, all wrong!" replied Martin Grille, laughing. "There has been hardly a day on which I have not seen him since, and when I hav'n't dined with you, I have dined at the Hôtel d'Orleans. He found out what you never found out: that I was dexterous, serviceable, and discreet, and many has been the little job which required dispatch and secrecy which I have done for him."
"Ay, dirty work, I trow," growled Caboche; but Martin Grille proceeded with his tale, without heeding his uncle's accustomed interruptions.
"Well, Signor Lomelini always promised," he said, "to get me rated on the duke's household. There was a prospect for a penniless lad, Petit Jean!"
"As well get you posted in the devil's kitchen," said Caboche, "and make you Satan's turnspit."
"But are you placed--but are you placed?" cried the deformed boy, eagerly.
"You shall hear all in good time," answered Martin Grille. "He promised, as I have said, to get me rated as soon as there was any vacancy; but the devil seemed in all the people. Not one of them would die, except old Angelo, the squire of the stirrup, and Monsieur De Gray, the duke's secretary. But those places were far too high for me."
"I see not why they should be," answered the deformed boy, "except that the squire is expected to fight at his lord's side, and the secretary to write for him; and I fancy, Cousin Martin, thou wouldst make as bad a hand at the one as the other."
"Ha, ha, ha!" shouted Caboche; "he hit thee there, Martin."
"On my life! I don't know," answered Martin Grille; "for I never tried either. However, yesterday afternoon the signor sent for me, and told me that the duke had got a new secretary--quite a young man, who knew very little of life, less of Paris, and nothing of a court: that this young gentleman had got no servant, and wanted one; that he had recommended me, and that I should be taken if I could recommend myself. I went to him in the gray of the evening, to set off my apparel the better, but I found the youth not quite so pastoral as I expected, and he began to ask me questions. Questions are very troublesome things, and answers still more so; so I made mine as short as possible."
"And he engaged you," cried the boy, eagerly.