"Oh, it is the roads," he always replied, shaking his bald head as he
began to set about his business. "The roads since your lordship became
surveyor-general are so good that not one horse in a hundred casts a shoe;
and then there are so few highwaymen now that not one robber's plates do I
replace in a twelvemonth. There is where it is."

At this I was highly delighted.

"Still, since I began to pass this way times have not been so bad with
you, Simon," I would answer.

Thereto he had one invariable reply.

"No; thanks to Ste. Geneviève and your lordship, whom we call in this
village the poor man's friend, I have a fowl in the pot."

This phrase so pleased me that I repeated it to the king. It tickled his
fancy also, and for some years it was a very common remark of that good
and great ruler, that he hoped to live to see every peasant with a fowl in
his pot.

"But why," I remember I once asked this honest fellow--it was on the last
occasion of the sorrel falling lame there--"do you thank Ste. Geneviève?"

"She is my patron saint," he answered.

"Then you are a Parisian?"

"Your lordship is always right."