"Monsieur, if you will help us, I have the richest jest ever
played. Pierre, listen. You, gentlemen all, listen! We will
pretend that he is changed. He is a pompous man; he thinks the
Mayor of Bottitort equal to the Saint Pere. Well, Pierre shall
be M. Grabot, Mayor of Bottitort. You, monsieur, that we may
give him enough of mayors, shall be the Mayor of Gol, and I will
be the Mayor of St. Just. This gentleman shall swear to us, so
shall the servants. For him, he does not exist. Oh, we will
punish him finely."
"But," I said, astounded by the very audacity of the rogue's
proposition, "you do not flatter yourself that you will deceive
him?"
"We shall, monsieur, if you will help," he answered confidently.
"I will be warrant for it we shall."
The thing had little of dignity in it, and I wonder now that I
complied; but I have always shared with the King, my master, a
taste for drolleries of the kind suggested; while nothing that I
had as yet heard of this Grabot was of a nature to induce me to
spare him.
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