“Yes, my friends,” said the consul, “Raimond V. treats Christians as he treats the dogs he hunts with. The other day he threatened this respectable Master Isnard whom you see here with his whip after having exposed him to the fury of two of the fiercest bulls from Camargne; it was a miracle that this worthy officer of the admiralty of Toulon escaped the awful peril that threatened his life,” said the consul, with an important air.
“A real miracle, for which I return thanks to Our Lady of la Garde,” added the recorder, devoutly. “I never saw such furious bulls.”
“By St Elmo, my patron!” said a sailor, “I would gladly have given my new scarf to have been a witness of that race. I have never seen bull-fights except in Barcelona.”
“Without taking into account that recorder-toreadors are very rare,” said another sailor.
Master Isnard, deeply wounded at inspiring so little interest, replied, with a doleful air, “I assure you, my friends, that it is a terrible, a formidable thing to be exposed to an attack from these ferocious animals.”
“Since you have been pursued by bulls,” asked an honest tailor, “do tell us, M. Recorder, if it is true that angry bulls have the tail curled up, and that they shut their eyes when they strike?”
Master Talebard-Talebardon shrugged his shoulders, and replied, sternly, to the inquirer:
“You think then, cut-cloth, that a person amuses himself by looking at a bull’s tail and eyes, when he is charging on him?”
“That is true, that is true,” replied several assistants. “Certain it is,” continued the consul, wishing to move the crowd to pity the recorder, and irritate it against the baron, “certain it is that this officer of justice and of the king narrowly escaped being a victim to the diabolical wickedness of Raimond V.”
“Raimond V. destroyed two litters of wolves’ whelps that ravaged our farm, to say nothing of the present he made us of the heads of the wolf and the whelps, which are nailed to our door,” said a peasant, shaking his head.
“Raimond V. is not a bad master. If the harvest fails, he comes to your aid; he replaced two draught-oxen that I lost through witchcraft.”
“That is true, when one holds out a hand to the lord of Anbiez, he never draws it back empty,” said an artisan.