ascended higher above the town. A sort of lull took place in their minds. Their brains became cooler, and simmered down like a coffee pot when taken away from the fire? Why?
We cannot answer this "why"; but the truth is that, having reached a certain landing-stage, two hundred and sixty-six feet above ground, the two adversaries sat down and, really more calm, looked at each other without any anger in their faces.
"How high it is!" said the burgomaster, passing his handkerchief over his rubicund face.
"Very high!" returned the counselor. "Do you know that we have gone fourteen feet higher than the Church of Saint Michael at Hamburg?"
"I know it," replied the burgomaster in a tone of vanity very pardonable in the chief magistrate of Quiquendone.
The two notabilities soon resumed their ascent, casting curious glances through the loopholes pierced in the tower walls. The burgomaster had taken the head of the procession, without any remark on the part of the counselor. It even happened that at about the three hundred and fourth step, Van Tricasse being completely tired out, Niklausse kindly pushed him from behind. The burgomaster offered no resistance to this, and, when he reached the platform of the tower, said graciously: "Thanks, Niklausse; I will do the same for you one day."
A little while before it had been two wild beasts, ready to tear each other to pieces, who had presented themselves at the foot of the tower; it was now two friends who reached its summit.
The weather was superb. It was the month of May. The sun had absorbed all the vapors. What a pure and limpid atmosphere! The most minute objects over a broad space might be discerned. The walls of Virgamen, glistening in their whiteness,—its red, pointed roofs, its belfries shining in the sunlight—appeared a few miles off. And this was the town that was foredoomed to all the horrors of fire and pillage!
The burgomaster and the counselor sat down beside each other on a small stone bench, like two worthy people whose souls were in close sympathy. As they recovered breath, they looked around; then, after a brief silence: "How fine this is!" cried the burgomaster.
