CLUBIN had been absent from the Jean Auberge all the evening of Tuesday. On the Wednesday night he was absent again.
In the dusk of that evening two strangers penetrated into the mazes of the Ruelle Coutanchez. They stopped in front of the Jacressade. One of them knocked at the window; the door of the shop opened, and they entered. The woman with the wooden leg met them with the smile which she reserved for respectable citizens. There was a candle on the table.
The strangers were, in fact, respectable citizens. The one who had knocked said, "Good-day, mistress. I have come for that affair."
The woman with the wooden leg smiled again, and went out by the back door leading to the courtyard, and where the well was. A moment afterwards the back door was opened again, and a man stood In the doorway. He wore a cap and a blouse. It was easy to see the shape of something under his blouse. He had bits of old straw in his clothes, and looked as if he had just been aroused from sleep.
He advanced and exchanged glances with the strangers. The man in the blouse looked puzzled, but cunning; he said,-
The one who had tapped at the window replied,-
"Yes; you are the man from Paris?"
The man took from under his blouse a weapon extremely rare at that period in Europe. It was a revolver.
The weapon was new and bright. The two strangers examined it. The one who seemed to know the house, and whom the man in the blouse had called "the gunsmith," tried the mechanism. He passed the weapon to the other, who appeared less at home there, and kept his back turned to the light.
The man in the blouse replied,-
"I have just brought it from America. Some people bring monkeys, parrots, and other animals, as if the French people were savages. For myself I brought this. It is a useful invention."
"How much?" inquired the gunsmith again.
"It is a pistol which turns and turns."
"Bang! the first fire. Bang! the second fire. Bang! the third fire. What a hailstorm of bullets! That will do some execution."
"Well, well, what do you want for it?"
"Six barrels; that is six Louis."
"Impossible. One Louis a ball. That is the price."
"Come, let us do business together. Be reasonable."
"I have named a fair price. Examine the weapon, Mr. Gunsmith."
"The barrel twists and turns like Talleyrand himself. The weapon ought to be mentioned in the ?Dictionary of Weathercocks.' It is a gem."
"The barrels are of Spanish make."
"They are twisted. This is how this twisting is done. They empty into a forge the basket of a collector of old iron. They fill it full of these old scraps, with old nails, and broken horse-shoes swept out of farriers' shops."
"I was going to say so, Mr. Gunsmith. They apply to all this rubbish a good sweating heat, and this makes a magnificent material for gun-barrels."
"Yes; but it may have cracks, flaws, or crosses."
"True; but they remedy the crosses by little twists, and avoid the risk of doublings by beating hard. They bring their mass of iron under the great hammer; give it two more good sweating heats. If the iron has been heated too much, they retemper it with dull heats and lighter hammers. And then they take out their stuff and roll it well; and with this iron they manufacture you a weapon like this."
"You are in the trade, I suppose?"
"The barrels are pale-coloured."
"That's the beauty of them, Mr. Gunsmith. The tint is obtained with antimony
"It is settled, then, that we give you five Louis?"
"Allow me to observe that I had the honour of saying six."
The gunsmith lowered his voice.
"Hark you, master. Take advantage of the opportunity. Get rid of this thing. A weapon of this kind is of no use to a man like you. It will make you remarked."
"It is very true," said the Parisian. "It is rather conspicuous. It is more suited to a gentleman."
"No, six; one for every shot."
"You are not a Bonapartist, then. You prefer a Louis to a Napoleon."
The Parisian nicknamed "Redskin" smiled.
"A Napoleon is greater," said he, "but a Louis is worth more."
"Six Louis. It makes a difference to me of four-and-twenty francs."
"The bargain is off in that case."
"Beating me down! a good idea! It shall never be said that I got rid like that of a wonderful specimen of ingenuity."
"It marks a whole stage in the progress of making pistols, which the Chesapeake Indians call Nortay-u-Hah."
"Five Louis, ready money. Why, it is a handful of gold."
"?Nortay-u-Hah,' that signifies ?short gun.' A good many people don't know that."
"Will you take five Louis, and just a bit of silver?"
The man who kept his back to the candle, and who had not yet spoken, was spending his time during the dialogue in turning and testing the mechanism of the pistol. He approached the armourer's ear and whispered,-
Five minutes afterwards, while the Parisian nicknamed "Redskin" was depositing the six Louis which he had just received in a secret slit under the breast of his blouse, the armourer and his companion carrying the revolver in his trousers pocket, stepped out into the straggling street.
