Despite all the precautions taken by Dame Ragonde, she could not prevent her neighbors from talking; they repeated, to whoever chose to listen, that Master Landry had a daughter more beautiful than the marvellous princesses of the Thousand and One Nights; that her surpassing beauty was the reason that her father and mother concealed her from all eyes, because they feared that somebody would take her away from them; and that they destined her for some wealthy foreign prince.
Others declared, on the contrary, that Master Landry's daughter was a monster of ugliness and deformity, and that it was to shelter the poor girl from the ridicule which was certain to be poured out upon her that they were careful to keep her out of sight.
This last version, however, obtained little credence. As a general rule, people do not take so many precautions with an ugly girl, or keep such close watch over one who has no reason to fear the enterprises of gallants.
Mystery always arouses curiosity, and the veil in which Dame Ragonde swathed Bathilde's face intensified the general desire to see it. Extremes are dangerous in everything: the man who puts too many bolts on his door arouses a suspicion that he possesses a treasure.
Chance had brought Landry and his confrère Hugonnet together. One evening, when the latter was returning home, as usual, after a merry evening over the bottle at a wine shop recently opened in the Cité, at some distance from his house, he lost his way. Alone, late at night, the barber wandered for a long while through the dark and muddy lanes which were then called streets, feeling his way along the walls, seeking his own door, and cursing because he did not find it.
Two men, emerging suddenly from a blind alley, walked toward the drunken man, who at once asked them to direct him. But he had applied to a pair of vagabonds, whose only reply was to set about robbing Master Hugonnet of his purse, his cloak, his great fur cap—in fact, of a large part of his clothes. At the outset, as a result of his intoxication, which entirely changed his disposition, Hugonnet placidly allowed himself to be stripped, thinking that he had to do with unfortunate creatures who needed all those things for their families. But one of the marauders having been so imprudent as to strike him on the head, the blow, by sobering the barber, instantly changed the face of affairs. Restored to his senses, and realizing with what manner of men he had to do, he defended himself stoutly; he dealt the two robbers some lusty blows, and they, irritated at meeting with such stubborn resistance from an intoxicated man, were already brandishing the daggers which they proposed to use, when Master Landry appeared upon the stage of this nocturnal attack.
To draw the rapier which he always carried under his cloak, to rush to the assistance of the man who was beset, to attack the two robbers with cut and thrust, to put them to flight, and to restore to Master Hugonnet his cloak, which had fallen to the ground—all this was the affair of a moment for the old trooper of Henri IV.
Hugonnet, completely sobered by the combat, offered Landry his hand and exclaimed:
"Vertudieu! I am inclined to think, comrade, that but for you those scoundrels would have made me pass a bad quarter of an hour!"
"I thank heaven that I arrived in time to offer you my assistance!"