“Bless your reverence!” said Modesta, “it would take a great deal to satisfy him!”
“Nay, ’twould take little enough. I would be quite content if I had the sight of my eyes again.”
“Good luck to you!” exclaimed the syndic at last, after having for some time looked on in admiring silence at the process of mastication and deglutition. “The like of us would be dead in three days if they ate in that fashion!”
“Just try a little abstinence!” said Doctor Phœbus. “Try living all the year round on wild herbs and roots boiled without salt, or roasted in the ashes. That’s my prescription for you, sir!”
“Well, well,” said the syndic, “I would willingly exchange my life for yours. You have no expenses; you pay no taxes—do you think that a small thing? Now, I have to spend the very soul out of my body; a little for the cat and a little for the dog, and what remains for me? At the end of the year—so much received, so much spent, everything paid, and nothing over!”
“I should just like to take you by the neck and hold you down to our life for a month or so, so that you could try it!”
“Is that the way to speak to me?” said the syndic, somewhat offended. “You ought to be more respectful.”
“Oh! you must not think, my dear sir,” said the archdeacon, “that the blind man is really wanting in respect towards the authorities. Not at all! He may be a little quick-tempered now and then, but when he recollects himself he is a perfect lamb!”
“A kind of lamb which——” began the Franciscan.
“What do you expect?” interrupted Phœbus. “I used to be as sweet as sugar; but now I am a little spoilt with doing nothing. Now that I have tried it I find, in truth, that the labour of a porter is better than the idleness of a gentleman. Just set me to work in your factory, sir; let me turn the wheel, and give me thirty centimes a day, and you’ll see how the blind man works!”