“What?”
“We will speak of that later. For the present listen to my advice, and when you grow up I hope you will think with a little gratitude of the poor musician of whom you were so afraid when he took you from your adopted mother. The change may not be bad for you after all.”
I wondered what my master had been in the days gone by.
We tramped on until we came to the plains of Quercy, which were very flat and desolate. There was not a brook, pond, or river to be seen. In the middle of the plain we came to a small village called Bastide-Murat. We spent the night in a barn belonging to the inn.
“It was here in this village,” said Vitalis, “and probably in this inn, that a man was born who led thousands of soldiers to battle and who, having commenced his life as a stable boy, afterwards became a king. His name was Murat. They called him a hero, and they named this village after him. I knew him and often talked with him.”
“When he was a stable boy?”
“No,” replied Vitalis, laughing, “when he was a king. This is the first time I have been in this part of the country. I knew him in Naples, where he was king.”
“You have known a king!”
The tone in which I said this must have been rather comical, for my master laughed heartily.
We were seated on a bench before the stable door, our backs against the wall, which, was still hot from the sun’s rays. The locusts were chanting their monotonous song in a great sycamore which covered us with its branches. Over the tops of the houses the full moon, which had just appeared, rose gently in the heavens. The night seemed all the more beautiful because the day had been scorchingly hot.