Bacchus!« he said at last, as if he were forced to the admission, »I have
sometimes had a thought of going to Paris, and perhaps to England.«
    »Cavalletto. This is in confidence. I also am going to Paris and perhaps to
England. We'll go together.«
    The little man nodded his head, and showed his teeth; and yet seemed not
quite convinced that it was a surpassingly desirable arrangement.
    »We'll go together,« repeated Lagnier. »You shall see how soon I will force
myself to be recognised as a gentleman, and you shall profit by it. Is it
agreed? Are we one?«
    »Oh, surely, surely!« said the little man.
    »Then you shall hear before I sleep - and in six words, for I want sleep -
how I appear before you, I Lagnier. Remember that. Not the other.«
    »Altro, altro! Not Ri--« Before John Baptist could finish the name, his
comrade had got his hand under his chin and fiercely shut up his mouth.
    »Death! what are you doing? Do you want me to be trampled upon and stoned?
Do you want to be trampled upon and stoned? You would be. You don't imagine that
they would set upon me, and let my prison chum go? Don't think it!«
    There was an expression in his face as he released his grip of his friend's
jaw, from which his friend inferred, that if the course of events really came to
any stoning and trampling, Monsieur Lagnier would so distinguish him with his
notice as to ensure his having his full share of it. He remembered what a
cosmopolitan gentleman Monsieur Lagnier was, and how few weak distinctions he
made.
    »I am a man,« said Monsieur Lagnier, »whom society has deeply wronged since
you last saw me. You know that I am sensitive and brave, and that it is my
character to govern. How has society respected those qualities in me? I have
been shrieked at through the streets. I have been guarded through the streets
against men, and especially women, running at me armed with any weapons they
could lay their hands on. I have lain in prison for security, with the place of
my confinement kept a secret, lest I should be torn out of it and felled by a
hundred blows. I have been carted out of Marseilles in the dead of night, and
carried leagues away from it packed in straw. It has not been safe for me