第38章

"It is abominable!" cried the host, addressing the soldier, who pressed his clinched fists in despair against his bald forehead."You expose this good man to be devoured by his beasts, and then you wish to beat him into the bargain.Is this fitting conduct for a graybeard? Shall we have to fetch the police? You showed yourself more reasonable in the early part of the evening."

These words recalled the soldier to himself.He regretted his impetuosity the more, as the fact of his being a stranger might augment the difficulty of his position.It was necessary above all to obtain the price of his horse, so as to be enabled to continue his journey, the success of which might be compromised by a single day's delay.With a violent effort, therefore, he succeeded in restraining his wrath.

"You are right--I was too hasty," said he to the host, in an agitated voice, which he tried to make as calm as possible."I had not the same patience as before.But ought not this man be responsible for the loss of my horse? I make you judge in the matter."

"Well, then, as judge, I am not of your opinion.All this has been your own fault.You tied up your horse badly, and he strayed by chance into this shed, of which no doubt the door was half-open," said the host, evidently taking the part of the brute-tamer.

"It was just as you say," answered Goliath."I can remember it.I left the door ajar, that the beasts might have some air in the night.The cages were well shut, and there was no danger."

"Very true," said one of the standers-by.

"It was only the sight of the horse," added another, "that made the panther furious, so as to break out of its cage."

"It is the Prophet who has the most right to complain," observed a third.

"No matter what this or that person says," returned Dagobert, whose patience was beginning to fail him, "I say, that I must have either money or a horse on the instant--yes, on the instant--for I wish to quit this unlucky house."

"And I say, it is you that must indemnify me," cried Morok, who had kept this stage-trick for the last, and who now exhibited his left hand all bloody, having hitherto concealed it beneath the sleeve of his pelisse.

"I shall perhaps be disabled for life," he added; "see what a wound the panther has made here!"

Without having the serious character that the Prophet ascribed to it, the wound was a pretty deep one.This last argument gained for him the general sympathy.Reckoning no doubt upon this incident, to secure the winning of a cause that he now regarded as his own, the host said to the hostler: "There is only one way to make a finish.It is to call up the burgomaster, and beg him to step here.He will decide who is right or wrong."

"I was just going to propose it to you," said the soldier, "for, after all, I cannot take the law into my own hands."

"Fritz, run to the burgomaster's!"--and the hustler started in all haste.

His master, fearing to be compromised by the examination of the soldier, whose papers he had neglected to ask for on his arrival, said to him:

"The burgomaster will be in a very bad humor, to be disturbed so late.I have no wish to suffer by it, and I must therefore beg you to go and fetch me your papers, to see if they are in rule.I ought to have made you show them, when you arrived here in the evening."

"They are upstairs in my knapsack; you shall have them," answered the soldier--and turning away his head, and putting his hand before his eyes, as he passed the dead body of Jovial, he went out to rejoin the sisters.

The Prophet followed him with a glance of triumph, and said to himself:

"There he goes!--without horse, without money, without papers.I could not do more--for I was forbidden to do more--I was to act with as much cunning as possible and preserve appearances.Now every one will think this soldier in the wrong.I can at least answer for it, that he will not continue his journey for some days--since such great interests appear to depend on his arrest, and that of the young girls."

A quarter of an hour after this reflection of the brute-tamer, Karl, Goliath's comrade, left the hiding-place where his master had concealed him during the evening, and set out for Leipsic, with a letter which Morok had written in haste, and which Karl, on his arrival, was to put immediately into the post.

The address of this letter was as follows:

"A Monsieur Rodin, Rue du Milieu-des-Ursins, No, 11, A Paris, France."