“Mathilde,” said the Bishop, trying to be stern, “I cannot permit you to call a guest in my house a ragamuffin.”
“Then,” cried Mathilde, “I will give him his right name, and call him a rapscallion!” And then she flounced out of the room, banging the door after her.
The Bishop sighed. He was a celibate, and yet he was henpecked worse than any man in Bienville.
François, listening outside, walked away laughing and resolving to pay off Mathilde for knowing the truth about him.
Two days after that, François again met the Bishop face to face in the street in front of the palace, and was warmly greeted. François, eying the clock in the cathedral steeple, saw that it was ten minutes of twelve, and remembering the history of Scheherezade and the Arabian Nights, began telling his crack story to the Bishop. In the midst of it came the bells announcing noon, and the odor of broiled chops from the kitchen window of the old stone house known as the palace. The Bishop, like other men, was subject to temptation, and he could not do without the end of the story, and besides he had always that excellent excuse that his father had been a laborer upon the estates of François’ father.
“Come in,” said the Bishop, “and have breakfast with me. My brother will not be here.”
“Thank God,” replied François. “Now, if you could get rid of that old battleaxe of a housekeeper while we are at breakfast, it would be better still.”
“That I can’t do,” said the Bishop ruefully. “But after all, she is a good creature, and my brother, the General, says it if were not for Mathilde I would never have a sous in my pocket or a coat to my back.”
“He is probably right,” answered François, taking the Bishop by the arm as they marched up the steps. “It is your cursed good nature that will always be giving you trouble.”
François’ reception at the hands of Mathilde was a trifle more hostile than before.