"I, Monseigneur! I haven't stirred from this spot, where you ordered me to await you."
"It must have been another, then; and if not to you to whom have I just been speaking?"
"Most certainly to the other. Monseigneur; to my double, my ghost."
"Poor Martin!" said Gabriel, compassionately, "are you in pain? Doesn't your head ache? Perhaps we have walked too far in the hot sun."
"Oh, yes!" said Martin-Guerre, "I see that you fancy that I am wandering, do you not? But a sure proof that I am not mistaken, Monseigneur, is that I don't know a single word of the orders that you think you gave me."
"You must have forgotten them, Martin," said Gabriel, gently. "Well, then, I will repeat them, my good fellow. I told you to go and wait for me with the flags in the Rue St. Antoine at the corner of the Rue St. Catherine. Jérôme will accompany you, and I will keep Christopher with me; don't you remember now?"
"Pardon, Monseigneur; but how can you expect me to remember what I never knew?"
"At all events, you know it now, Martin," said Gabriel. "Come, let us take our horses again at the gates, where our people ought to be waiting with them, and then be off at once. To the Tournelles!"
"I obey, Monseigneur. The amount of it is that you have two squires; but I am very glad at least that I have not two masters."
The lists for the formal celebration had been laid out across the Rue St. Antoine from the Tournelles to the royal stables. They were in the form of a large square, bordered on each side by scaffolding filled with spectators. At one end were the queen and the court; at the other end was the entrance to the lists where the participants in the games were waiting; the general public filled the two remaining galleries.