Chapter 16

--Come apace, good Audrey, I will fetch
Up your goats, Audrey: and how, Audrey? am
I the man yet? Doth my simple features content
You.

_As You Like It._

While the mummeries related were exhibiting in the great square, Maso,
Pippo, Conrad, and the others concerned in the little disturbance
connected with the affair of the dog, were eating their discontent within
the walls of the guard-house. Vévey has several squares, and the various
ceremonies of the gods and demigods were now to be repeated in the smaller
areas. On one of the latter stands the town-house and prison. The
offenders in question had been summarily transferred to the gaol, in
obedience to the command of the officer charged with preserving the peace.
By an act of grace, however, that properly belonged to the day, as well as
to the character of the offence, the prisoners were permitted to occupy a
part of the edifice that commanded a view of the square, and consequently
were not precluded from all participation in the joyousness of the
festivities. This indulgence had been accorded on the condition that the
parties should cease their wrangling, and otherwise conduct themselves in
a way not to bring scandal on the exhibition in which the pride of every
Vévaisan was so deeply enlisted. All the captives, the innocent as well as
the guilty, gladly subscribed to the terms; for they found themselves in
a temporary duresse which did not admit of any fair argument of the merits
of the case, and there is no leveller so effectual as a common misfortune.

The anger of Maso, though sudden and violent, the effect of a hot
temperament, had quickly subsided in a calm which more probably belonged
to his education and opinions, in all of which he was much superior to his
profligate antagonist. Contempt, therefore, soon took the place of
resentment; and though too much accustomed to rude contact with men of the
pilgrim's class to be ashamed of what had occurred, the manner strove to
forget the occurrence. It was one of those moral disturbances to which he
was scarcely less used than he was accustomed to encounter physical
contests of the elements like that in which he had lately rendered so
essential service on the Leman.

"Give me thy hand, Conrad;" he said, with the frank forgiveness which is
apt to distinguish the reconciliation of men who pass their lives amid the
violent, but sometimes ennobling, scenes of adventure and lawlessness.
"Thou hast thy humors and habits, and I have mine. If thou findest this
traffic in penances and prayers to thy fancy, follow the trade, of
Heaven's sake, and leave me and my dog to live by other means!"

"Thou ought'st to have bethought thee how much reason we pilgrims have