He saluted each one with a
mocking gesture as he passed, and stood tranquilly watching them as
long as he could see them. In a few minutes he had the satisfaction of
hearing the stamping of horses' feet in the court-yard below, then the
opening of the outer door to let them pass out into the street, and
finally a great clattering of hoofs as they galloped off down the Rue
Dauphine.
At breakfast the next morning the tyrant said to de Sigognac, "Captain,
doesn't your curiosity prompt you to go out and look about you a little
in this great city--one of the finest in the world, and of such high
renown in history? If it is agreeable to you I will be your guide and
pilot, for I have been familiar from my youth up with the rocks and
reefs, the straits and shallows, the scyllas and charybdises of this
seething ocean, which are often so dangerous--sometimes so fatal--to
strangers, and more especially to inexperienced country people. I will
be your Palinurus--but I promise you that I shall not allow myself to
be caught napping, and so fall overboard, like him that Virgil tells us
about. We are admirably located here for sight-seeing; the Pont-Neuf,
which is close at hand, you know, is to Paris what the Sacra Via was to
ancient Rome--the great resort and rallying place of high and low, great
and small, noble men, gentlemen, bourgeois, working men, rogues and
vagabonds.
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