ed his lantern, he had to put on his big cow-skin shoes and his sheep-skin gloves: then he put up the furred collar of his overcoat, turned the brim of his felt hat down over his eyes, grasped his heavy crow-beaked umbrella, and got ready to start.
However, when Lotche, who was lighting her master, was about to draw the bars of the door, an unexpected noise arose outside.
Yes! Strange as the thing seems, a noise—a real noise, such as the town had certainly not heard since the taking of the donjon by the Spaniards in 1513—a terrible noise, awoke the long dormant echoes of the venerable van Tricasse mansion.
Someone knocked heavily upon this door, hitherto virgin to brutal touch! Redoubled knocks were given with some blunt implement, probably a knotty stick, wielded by a vigorous arm. With the strokes were mingled cries and calls. These words were distinctly heard:
"Monsieur van Tricasse! Monsieur the burgomaster! Open, open quickly!"
The burgomaster and the counselor, absolutely astounded, looked at each other speechless.
This passed their comprehension. If the old culverin of the chateau, which had not been used since 1385, had been let off in the parlor, the dwellers in the van Tricasse mansion would not have been more dumbfounded.
Meanwhile, the blows and cries were redoubled. Lotche, recovering her coolness, had plucked up enough courage to speak.
"Who is there?"
"It is I! I! I!"
"Who are you?"
"The Commissary Passauf!"
A Threatened Duel
The Commissary Passauf! The very man whose office it had been contemplated to suppress for ten years. What had happened, then? Could the Burgundians have invaded Quiquendone, as they did in the fourteenth century? No event of less importance could have so moved Commissary Passauf, who in no degree yielded the palm to the burgomaster himself for calmness and phlegm.
On a sign from van Tricasse—for the worthy man could not have articulated a syllable—the bar was pushed back, and the door opened.
Commissary Passauf flung himself into the antechamber. One would have thought there was a hurricane.
"What's the matter, Monsieur the Commissary?" asked Lotche, a brave woman, who did not lose her head under the most trying circumstances.
"What's the matter!" replied Passauf, whose big round eyes expressed a genuine agitation. "The matter is that I have just come from Doctor Ox's, who has been holding a reception, and that there"
"There?"
"There I have witnessed such an altercation as—Monsieur the burgomaster, they have been talking politics!"
"Politics!" resumed Commissary Passauf, "which has not been done for perhaps a hundred years at Quiquendone. Then the discussion got warm, and the advocate, André Schut, and the doctor, Dominique Custos, became so violent that it may be they will call each other out."
"Call each other out!" cried the counselor. "A duel! A duel at Quiquendone!" And what did Advocate Schut and Doctor Custos say?"
"Just this: 'Monsieur Advocate,' said the doctor to his adversary, 'you go too far, it seems to me, and you do not take sufficient care to control your words!'"
The burgomaster van Tricasse clasped his hands—the counselor turned pale and let his lantern fall—the commissary shook his head. That a phrase so evidently irritating should be pronounced by two of the principal men in the country!
"This Doctor Custos," muttered van Tricasse, "is decidedly a dangerous man—a hare-brained fellow! Come, gentlemen!"
On this, Counselor Niklausse and the commissary accompanied the burgomaster into the parlor.
CHAPTER IV
In Which Doctor Ox Reveals Himself as a Physiologist of the First Rank and as an Audacious Experimentalist
Who was this personage, known by the singular name of Doctor Ox?
An original character for certain, but at the same time a bold savant, a physiologist, whose works were known and highly estimated throughout learned Europe, a happy rival of the Davys, the Daltons, the Bostocks, the Menzies, the Godwins, the Vierordts—of those noble minds who have placed physiology among the highest of modern sciences.
Doctor Ox was a man of medium size and height, aged—but we cannot state his age, any more than his nationality. Besides, it matters little; let it suffice that he was a strange personage, impetuous and hot-blooded, a regular oddity out of one of Hoffmann's volumes, and one who contrasted amusingly enough with the good people of Quiquendone. He had an imperturbable confidence both in himself and in his doctrines. Always smiling, walking with head erect and shoulders thrown back in a free and unconstrained manner, with a steady gaze, large open nostrils, a vast mouth which inhaled the air in liberal draughts, his appearance was far from unpleasing. He was full of animation, well proportioned in all parts of his bodily mechanism, with quicksilver in his veins, and a most elastic step. He could never stop still in one place, and relieved himself with impetuous words and a superabundance of gesticulations.
Was Doctor Ox rich, then, that he should undertake to light a whole town at his expense? Probably, as he permitted himself to indulge in such extravagance,—and this is the only answer we can give to this indiscreet question.
Doctor Ox had arrived at Quiquendone five months before, accompanied by his assistant, who answered to the name of Gedeon Ygene; a tall, dried-up, thin man, haughty, but not less vivacious than his master.
What Does Dr. Ox Want to Do?
And next, why had Doctor Ox made the proposition to light the town at his own expense? Why had he, of all the Flemings, selected the peaceable Quiquendonians, to endow their town with
