My poor master stretched himself on a bed by the stooping wall, and in disgust of life and great pain of feet, begged us to order a pan of charcoal and let him die the true Parisian death when that is not met on the scaffold. Skenedonk said to me in Iroquois that Doctor Chantry was a sick old woman who ought to be hidden some place to die, and it was his opinion that the blessing of the church would absolve us. We could then make use of the pouch of coin to carry on my plans.
My plans were more ridiculous than Skenedonk's. His at least took sober shape, while mine were still the wild emotions of a young man's mind. Many an hour I had spent on the ship, watching the foam speed past her side, trying to foresee my course like hers in a trackless world. But it seemed I must wait alertly for what destiny was making mine.
We paid for our lodgings, three commodious rooms, though in the mansard; my secretary dragging himself to sit erect with groans and record the increasing debt of myself and my servant.
"Come, Skenedonk," I then said. "Let us go down to the earth and buy something that Doctor Chantry can eat."
That benevolent Indian was quite as ready to go to market as to abate human nuisances. And Doctor Chantry said he could almost see English beef and ale across the channel; but translated into French they would, of course, be nothing but poulet and sour wine. I pillowed his feet with a bag of down which he had kicked off his bed, and Skenedonk and I lingered along the paving as we had many a time lingered through the woods. There were book stalls a few feet square where a man seemed smothered in his own volumes; and victual shops where you could almost feed yourself for two or three sous; and people sitting outdoors drinking wine, as if at a general festival. I thought Paris had comfort and prosperity—with hereditary kings overthrown and an upstart in their place. Yet the streets were dirty, with a smell of ancientness that sickened me.
We got a loaf of bread as long as a staff, a pat of butter in a leaf, and a bottle of wine. My servant, though unused to squaw labor, took on himself the porterage of our goods, and I pushed from street to street, keenly pleased with the novelty, which held somewhere in its volatile ether the person of Madame de Ferrier.
Skenedonk blazed our track with his observant eye, and we told ourselves we were searching for Doctor Chantry's beef. Being the unburdened hunter I undertook to scan cross places, and so came unexpectedly upon the Rue St. Antoine, as a man told me it was called, and a great hurrahing that filled the mouths of a crowd blocking the thoroughfare.
"Long live the emperor!" they shouted.
The man who told me the name of the street, a baker all in white, with his tray upon his head, objected contemptuously.
"The emperor is not in Paris: he is in Boulogne."