The strange interview which I have described of course yielded my thoughts sufficient employment. Was it--could it really be, I asked myself, that I had spent the last hour in conversation with the greatest statesman in modern Europe? And in conversation about what? about Ovid--the task of a school-boy in an inferior class--when I could have afforded him minute information upon events on which the fate of nations depended.
Could he have received prior information? Impossible! Our vessel had sailed with the fairest wind, and the speed of our passage had been made a marvel of by the sailors; I had lost no time upon the road, and it was impossible--surely quite impossible--that he could have received tidings from Catalonia in a shorter space, without, indeed, the devil, as the vulgar did not scruple to say, sent him tidings from all parts of the world by especial couriers of his own.
One thing, however, is certain; I went to the Palais Cardinal a very important person in my own opinion, and I came away from it with my self-consequence very terribly diminished.
My next reflections turned to the minister's very unclerical dress, and I puzzled myself for some time in fancying the various errands which might have required such a disguise--for disguise it evidently was. Of course, I could conclude upon nothing, and was only obliged to end in supposing, with the boy who had guided me thither, that no one knew how, or why, he did anything.
My way home was easily found; and retiring to bed, I dreamed all night, between sleeping and waking, of courts and prime ministers, and woke the next morning not at all refreshed for having passed the night in such company. I had more disagreeable society, however, before long; for when I had been up about an hour, and was preparing to go out and view the great and stirring bee-hive, whose hum reached me even in my own cell, the worthy host of the auberge bustled into the room with an appearance of great terror, begging a thousand pardons for his intrusion; but he hoped, he said, that if I had anything in my bags which I wished to conceal, I would put it away quickly, for that the officers of justice were in the house, and he had heard them inquire for a person very much resembling me.
Of course, I laughed at the idea; but the landlord had hardly concluded his tale, when in rushed two sergeants and a greffier, dressed in their black robes of office. One stationed himself at the door, one threw himself between me and the window, and then commanded me in the king's name to surrender myself.
I replied that I was very willing to surrender, but that there must be assuredly some mistake, for that I had not been in Paris sufficient time to commit any great crime.
"No mistake, sir! no mistake!" replied one of the sergeants. "People who have the knack, commit crimes as fast as I can eat oysters. You are accused, sir, of filching. They say, sir, you are guilty of appropriation. A good man, an excellent good man, Jonas Echimillia, of the persecuted race of Abraham, avers against you, sir, that last night, towards ten of the clock, you entered his dwelling, sir, wherein he gives shelter to old servants cast off by ungrateful masters--in other words, sir, his frippery--and notoriously and abominably seduced a white silk suit, laced with gold, to elope with you, to the identity of which suit he will willingly swear. So open your swallow-all, or trunk mail, and let us see what it contains."
Whilst the worthy sergeant thus proceeded, the warning of my good friend the grocer came across my mind, and I thought that there was an affectation about the voice of the respectable officer, which made me suspect that the whole business might be contrived to extort money; though how they could know that I had a white silk dress, laced with gold, in the valise before me, I could not divine. However, I affected to be very much alarmed; and while I examined well the countenances of my honest guests, I feigned a wish to bribe them into a connivance.
"Not for a hundred pistoles!" cried the principal sergeant.