labor of many years had caused it, from that evening, from that moment,
the memory of the Emperor's great Minister began to decay. The ambitious
designs of the shepherd boy of twenty years ago came back to him; but of
all that had befallen him since, John Durer remembered nothing. The hour
of requital was begun!


VI.

Thanks to his good courser, Baron Durer, the Minister, got home in safety
to his château. The first person that he met was the baroness. He
turned abruptly away from her.

"Whither are you hurrying so fast, my dear baron?" said she, seeing her
husband running away from her, which was not his custom, for he was fond
of his wife.

"Baron!" was his reply; "to what baron were you calling? I am no baron,
madame--though one day, perhaps, I may be. Let us hope I may."

The tone in which he spoke these words terrified the baroness. Her
husband immediately afterward left the château, and began running as fast
as his legs could carry him, neither stopping nor slackening his pace.
His head was bent down, like the head of a miser who is seeking about
everywhere for the treasure which some one has stolen from him. From
that day forward his face assumed a gloomy expression, his color became
sallow, his eye haggard; and he began bitterly to complain that heaven
had thought fit to send him on earth in a shepherd's form and a
shepherd's dress.