For a moment they glared at me as if they had seen a ghost. Then
the wine merchant clapped his hand on the table.
'That is enough,' he said, with a look at his companions. 'I
think that there can be no mistake about that. As damnable
treason as ever I heard whispered! I congratulate you, sir, on
your boldness. As for you,' he continued, turning with an ugly
sneer to the landlord, 'I shall know now the company you keep! I
was not aware that my wine wet whistles to such a tune!'
But if he was startled, the innkeeper was furious, seeing his
character thus taken away; and, being at no time a man of many
words, he vented his rage exactly in the way I wished, raising in
a twinkling such an uproar as can scarcely be conceived. With a
roar like a bull's, he ran headlong at the table, and overturned
it on the top of me. Fortunately the woman saved the lamp, and
fled with it into a corner, whence she and the man from the
Chateau watched the skirmish in silence; but the pewter cups and
platters flew spinning across the floor, while the table pinned
me to the ground among the ruins of my stool.
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