CHAPTER III
THE SPLENDID EVENTS THAT HAPPENED AT BIENVILLE
The next day François duly presented himself at the palace at twelve o’clock for breakfast with the Bishop. Much to his disgust, the General was present. François, who loved to fool people, assumed an air and tone of extreme virtue, and again told, with many additions, a pretty story of his reverses and his determination to earn an honest living by doing juggling and acrobating, the only things he knew how to do by which a franc could be earned. The good Bishop was lost in admiration of François, and said:
“That, my dear M. le Bourgeois, as you call yourself, is the highest form of virtue and respectability, is it not, my brother?”
General Bion maintained a stiff silence, which annoyed the good Bishop exceedingly.
The General meant to sit François out, not doubting that he would contrive to borrow a small sum of money from the Bishop before leaving. But François held his ground, as his ancestors had held theirs on many a hard-fought field, and the General, called away by his military duties, had to leave the wolf in conversation with the lamb. He left a deputy, however, in the person of Mathilde, the Bishop’s housekeeper, an angular and ferocious person of sixty, who disapproved of the Bishop’s fondness for picking up stray acquaintances and lost dogs and cats and giving them the hospitality of the palace.
When François and the Bishop were left alone in the Bishop’s study, then François laid himself out to amuse his host. Soon he had the Bishop roaring with laughter over jokes and merry stories, and at two o’clock it was as much as François could do to tear himself away.
By the time he was out of the room Mathilde had stalked in and proceeded to give the Bishop a piece of her mind.
“Does your Grace remember,” she asked wrathfully, “the last adventurer your Grace took up with, who borrowed ninety francs of your Grace and then skipped off to Paris?”
“Yes, my good Mathilde, I know,” responded the Bishop, using a soft answer to turn away wrath. “But this gentleman, you see—for he is a gentleman—belongs to a family which were exceedingly kind to my family, and especially my father. He was a laborer upon the estates of this gentleman’s father. Think of it!”
“That shows,” cried Mathilde, “what a good-for-nothing scamp he must have been. Who ever saw a gentleman standing on his head, like this fellow does, and playing tricks with cards? I kept my hand upon my purse in my pocket all the time I was serving the General and your Grace and this ragamuffin at breakfast.”