Page:The Works of Honoré de Balzac Volume 29.djvu/79

Rh "They only take what others have taken from them," put in the recteur quickly, while the eyes of either traveler stared at the other as if to penetrate into either's brain. In the interior of the coach sat a third person who remained absolutely silent through the thick of the debate. Neither the driver, the patriot, nor Gudin himself took the slightest heed of this nonentity. As a matter of fact, he was one of those tiresome and inconvenient people who travel by coach as passively as a calf that is carried with its legs tied up to a neighboring market. At the outset they possess themselves of at least the space allotted to them by the regulations, and end by sleeping without consideration or humanity on their neighbors' shoulders. The patriot, Gudin, and the driver had let him alone, thinking that he was asleep, as soon as they had ascertained that it was useless to attempt to converse with a man whose stony countenance bore the records of a life spent in measuring ells of cloth, and a mind bent solely upon buying cheap and selling dear. Yet, in the corner where he lay curled up, a pair of china-blue eyes opened from time to time; the stout, little man had viewed each speaker in turn with alarm, doubt, and mistrust, but he seemed to stand in fear of his traveling companions, and to trouble himself very little about Chouans. The driver and he looked at one another like a pair of freemasons. Just then the firing began at La Pèlerine; Coupiau stopped in dismay, not knowing what to do.

"Oh, ho!" said the churchman, who seemed to grasp the situation; "this is something serious. There are a lot of people about."

"The question is, who will get the best of it, M. Gudin?" cried Coupiau, and this time the same anxiety was seen on all faces.

"Let us put up at the inn down there, and hide the coach till the affair is decided," suggested the patriot.

The advice seemed so sound that Coupiau acted upon it, and with the patriot's help concealed the coach behind a pile of faggots.