Droll Stories, vol 2 | Page 6

for ingenuity, and all
three arranged to play their parts like thieves at a fair. Theirs was a
farce in which there was plenty of eating and drinking, since for five
days they so heartily attacked every kind of provision that a party of
German soldiers would have spoiled less than they obtained by fraud.
These three cunning fellows made their way to the fair after breakfast,
well primed, gorged, and big in the belly, and did as they liked with the
greenhorns and others, robbing, filching, playing, and losing, taking

down the writings and signs and changing them, putting that of the
toyman over the jeweller's, and that of the jeweller's outside the shoe
maker's, turning the shops inside out, making the dogs fight, cutting the
ropes of tethered horses, throwing cats among the crowd, crying, "Stop
thief!" And saying to every one they met, "Are you not Monsieur
D'Enterfesse of Angiers?" Then they hustled everyone, making holes in
the sacks of flour, looking for their handkerchiefs in ladies' pockets,
raising their skirts, crying, looking for a lost jewel and saying to them--
"Ladies, it has fallen into a hole!"
They directed the little children wrongly, slapped the stomachs of those
who were gaping in the air, and prowled about, fleecing and annoying
every one. In short, the devil would have been a gentleman in
comparison with these blackguard students, who would have been
hanged rather than do an honest action; as well have expected charity
from two angry litigants. They left the fair, not fatigued, but tired of
ill-doing, and spent the remainder of their time over dinner until the
evening when they recommenced their pranks by torchlight. After the
peddlers, they commenced operations on the ladies of the town, to
whom, by a thousand dodges, they gave only that which they received,
according to the axiom of Justinian: /Cuiqum jus tribuere/. "To every
one his own juice;" and afterwards jokingly said to the poor wenches--
"We are in the right and you are in the wrong."
At last, at supper-time, having nothing else to do, they began to knock
each other about, and to keep the game alive, complained of the flies to
the landlord, remonstrating with him that elsewhere the innkeepers had
them caught in order that gentleman of position might not be annoyed
by them. However, towards the fifth day, which is the critical day of
fevers, the host not having seen, although he kept his eyes wide open,
the royal surface of a crown, and knowing that if all that glittered were
gold it would be cheaper, began to knit his brows and go more slowly
about that which his high-class merchants required of him. Fearing that
he had made a bad bargain with them, he tried to sound the depth of
their pockets; perceiving which the three clerks ordered him with the
assurance of a Provost hanging his man, to serve them quickly with a

good supper as they had to depart immediately. Their merry
countenances dismissed the host's suspicions. Thinking that rogues
without money would certainly look grave, he prepared a supper
worthy of a canon, wishing even to see them drunk, in order the more
easily to clap them in jail in the event of an accident. Not knowing how
to make their escape from the room, in which they were about as much
at their ease as are fish upon straw, the three companions ate and drank
immoderately, looking at the situation of the windows, waiting the
moment to decamp, but not getting the opportunity. Cursing their luck,
one of them wished to go and undo his waistcoat, on account of a colic,
the other to fetch a doctor to the third, who did his best to faint. The
cursed landlord kept dodging about from the kitchen into the room, and
from the room into the kitchen, watching the nameless ones, and going
a step forward to save his crowns, and going a step back to save his
crown, in case they should be real gentlemen; and he acted like a brave
and prudent host who likes halfpence and objects to kicks; but under
pretence of properly attending to them, he always had an ear in the
room, and a foot in the court; fancied he was always being called by
them, came every time they laughed, showing them a face with an
unsettled look upon it, and always said, "Gentlemen, what is your
pleasure?" This was an interrogatory in reply to which they would
willingly have given him ten inches of his own spit in his stomach,
because he appeared as if he knew very well what would please them at
this juncture, seeing that to have twenty crowns, full weight, they
would each of them have sold a third of