such companions.

"Let me see," he thought to himself, as the coucou went down the hill
from La Chapelle to the plain of Saint-Denis, "shall I pass myself off
for Etienne or Beranger? No, these idiots don't know who they are.
Carbonaro? the deuce! I might get myself arrested. Suppose I say I'm
the son of Marshal Ney? Pooh! what could I tell them?--about the
execution of my father? It wouldn't be funny. Better be a disguised
Russian prince and make them swallow a lot of stuff about the Emperor
Alexander. Or I might be Cousin, and talk philosophy; oh, couldn't I
perplex 'em! But no, that shabby fellow with the tousled head looks to
me as if he had jogged his way through the Sorbonne. What a pity! I
can mimic an Englishman so perfectly I might have pretended to be Lord
Byron, travelling incognito. Sapristi! I'll command the troops of Ali,
pacha of Janina!"

During this mental monologue, the coucou rolled through clouds of dust
rising on either side of it from that much travelled road.

"What dust!" cried Mistigris.

"Henry IV. is dead!" retorted his master. "If you'd say it was scented
with vanilla that would be emitting a new opinion."

"You think you're witty," replied Mistigris. "Well, it _is_ like
vanilla at times."

"In the Levant--" said Georges, with the air of beginning a story.

"'Ex Oriente flux,'" remarked Mistigris's master, interrupting the