"Indeed!" exclaimed I, in reply to Jacques Marlot's information, "indeed! you make me but the more curious. Let me offer my adorations with all speed to the first of your household divinities."
"Well, well; enter, enter, by all means," he cried: "I am not made of jealous stuff, thank God; and as our love has already lasted five long years, I trust it will not break short at matrimony."
I was now conducted in form into the house; and on the first floor we found the bride and her coadjutrix, when my surprise was still more excited, by beholding in Madame Marlot the pretty brunette whom I had seen at the inn near St. Aubin, on my first arrival in Brittany, and who had warned me of what was passing between her father and the groom who then accompanied me. After the first salutation, I returned her my thanks in set form, although I had nearly lost my life in consequence of her information; and I then enquired after her worthy and respectable father as tenderly as my conscience would permit me to do. In reply, she informed me that her parent had most unjustly been suspected of having given information to the same band of robbers who had plundered me, that the courier for St. Malo was about to pass within their hospitable neighbourhood, on a certain day and hour; and that, in consequence, he had been arrested and thrown into prison, where, within one fortnight, he died, just as the authorities were about to liberate him, having become convinced of his innocence, and judging that a fortnight's imprisonment was a sufficient punishment for being suspected. The prisoner having thus liberated himself, his daughter was left, according to her own account, sole heiress of her father's wealth, which proved a burden less weighty than she had anticipated. She also found so many persons in this generous world willing to relieve her of it, that she saw very clearly it would soon be no burden at all; and therefore, she set herself to consider what she might best do under such circumstances, when suddenly her ancient lover, Jacques Marlot, appeared one night at the inn, and presented her with an expedient that she did not fail to adopt.
In reply to this communication, I paid her my compliments upon her wisdom; and, as I found that the kind-hearted brunette and her bridegroom were both bent upon my staying to partake of their first dinner in their new dwelling, I yielded to my fate, and found that neither Jacques Marlot's taste for _friandise_, nor the skill which Madame had acquired in the kitchen of an inn, had abandoned them. During our meal, my philosopher gave me a sketch of his wandering life in the guise of a pedlar; and then related the means he had employed to obtain his pardon, which were ingenious enough. It appears that in France the presence of the King is always mercy, and that if he but set eyes upon a condemned criminal his punishment is remitted. Well knowing this fact, and trusting to his disguise, Jacques Marlot made his way towards Paris, and having heard that the King and Court were about to make their public entrance into the capital on a certain day, he prepared to take advantage thereof, to obtain his pardon. This plan succeeded to his wish. Bribing some of the guards at the palace with a considerable portion of what he had gained in his petty traffic, he placed himself in a spot where the royal party were sure to pass, in descending from their carriages; and, as the young King and the Queen came on together, he struggled forward to cast himself at their feet. One of the ushers, indeed, opposed his progress, and knocked the poor printer down to make him clear the way; but this only brought him literally to the King's knees; and the young monarch's first impulse was to stoop in order to raise him, reproving, at the same time, the usher for his violence.