P. C. Breagh said:
"The one and only time I did use it, it proved of service to me. But later——"
"Speak frankly," said the Chancellor. "I have no disrelish for candor, you are aware."
P. C. Breagh said, flushing to the temples:
"Later, the accidental discovery that I possessed it, exposed me to the accusation of being a spy."
"So you chose to do without it?"
"I thought," said P. C. Breagh, "that I would try to do without it. And upon the whole I managed—better than I expected to...."
"To put it baldly," commented the resonant voice of the Minister, "you preferred to travel in blinkers and with hobbles on—for the sake of a scruple of the genteel kind. That is your Celtic blood.... You remind me of the story—I think it hails from Dublin, of the little old spinster lady of high family, who was reduced for a living to hawking pickled pig's-trotters in the streets. She accepted the money to buy the license, with the basket and the first installment of trotters, and went forth into the streets to sell them—but beyond this, as a gentlewoman—her feelings did not permit her to go. So she cried, in a whisper: 'Trotters! who'll buy my trotters! Only a penny! Pickled trotters! Please God, nobody hears me!' ... and nobody did hear her, so that was the end of her...."
He had told his absurd tale with one of those comic changes of face and voice characteristic of him. Now he reverted to gravity, and said, as P. C. Breagh rose to withdraw:
"Go! but remain here as my guest for the present. You are not under surveillance. But there is one question I must again put to you. What of this mysterious personage who represented himself to you as M. Charles Tessier? You must now be convinced that Mademoiselle knows nothing of him? Well, then, I will repeat the simple questions which you refused to answer just now. Where did you first see him? how long ago? and how many times have you encountered him?"