To whom did it belong? we asked an old woman on the road.
“To a Monsieur who is enormously rich,” she said. “Mais, tout le même”—“But, all the same”—“he is bourgeois!”
The village was just beyond, and in its inn we had lunch.—While we were eating, bang went a drum on the street, and a bell began to ring. It was a pedler, who had drawn up his cart. When we strolled out to the street he had collected quite a crowd.
“Look at these,” he was saying, as he showed a package of flannels; “in the town the price is three francs. I ask thirty-five sous. I pray you, ladies, do me the favour to feel them. Are they not soft? But this is the last package I have. And now, all those who want a pair, hold up their hands.”
—There was a scramble; more hands than could be filled were raised; his assistant took down the names of the buyers, and then—the pedler produced just such another package from his cart.——
“Nom de Dieu! what longness!” he cried, as he held up a specimen in front of the nearest woman.
—At this every one laughed.——
“But, my children”—mes enfants, that is what he called them—“we are not here to amuse ourselves.”
—And so the sale went on. Every article exhibited was the last of the kind until it was sold. He knew them in this country here, this prince of pedlers told them. They did not like to buy dear.—When we turned away he had just sold a piece of corduroy—town price, twelve francs; pedler’s price, five francs fifty—to an old man who went off grinning, his prize under his arms.
—The villagers were all talking together, but above their voices we heard that of the pedler, loud and reproachful.——