can form his own conclusions."

The doctor removed his tall conical cap, and placed it on the table.

"You guess rightly," he said with a smile. "I was in the crowd and marked
you enter, and a soldier standing next to me observed to a comrade that he
had heard that Burgundy had sent the herald to demand the surrender of a
castle held by one Sir Eustace, a knight who was known to have friendly
leanings towards the English, being a vassal of their king for estates
that had come to him with an English wife, and that doubtless this was the
lady. When my eye fell on you in the crowd I said: Here is a youth of
shrewdness and parts, he is alone and is a foreigner, and maybe I can be
of service to him; therefore I shot my shaft, and, as you see, with
success. I said to myself: This youth, being a stranger, will know of no
one to whom he can turn for information, and I can furnish him with almost
any that he may require. I come in contact with the highest and the
lowest, for the Parisians are credulous, and after dark there are some of
rank and station who come to my doors for filtres and nostrums, or to have
their horoscope cast and their futures predicted. You will ask why one who
has such clients should condescend to stand at a booth and talk to this
rabble; but it has its purpose. Were I known only as one whom men and
women visit in secret, I should soon become suspected of black arts, the
priests would raise an outcry against me, and one of these days I might be
burned. Here, however, I ostensibly earn my living as a mountebank vendor
of drugs and nostrums, and therefore no one troubles his head about me."

"There is one thing that you have not told me," Guy said when he ceased
speaking. "Having, as you say, good clients besides your gains here, why
should you trouble to interest yourself in our affairs?"