CHAPTER II.
THE locksmith lifted his tumbler to his eye’s level, admired the liquor with pleasure, and said after sipping it with gratification:
“Bless you, yes, plenty of locksmiths at Paris.”
He drank a few drops more.
“Ay, and masters of the craft.” He drank again. “Yes, but there is a difference between them.”
“Hang me,” said the other, “but I believe you are like St. Eloi, our patron saint, master among the master-workmen.”
“Are you one of us?”
“Akin, my boy: I am a gunsmith. All smiths are brothers. This is a sample of my work.”
The locksmith took the gun from the speaker’s hands, examined it with attention, clicked the hammers and approved with a nod of the sharp action of the lock: but spying the name on the plate, he said:
“Leclere? this won’t do, friend, for Leclere is scanty thirty, and we are both a good forty, without meaning to hurt your feelings.”
“Quite true, I am not Leclere, but it is the same thing, only a little more so. For I am his master.”
“Oh, capital!” chuckled the locksmith; “it is the same as my saying ‘I am not the King but I am the same thing, only more so, as I am his master.'”
“Oho,” said the other rising and burlesquing the military salute, “have I the honor of addressing Master Gamain, the King of Locksmiths?”
“Himself in person, and delighted if he can do anything for you,” replied Gamain, enchanted at the effect his name had produced.
“The devil! I had no idea I was talking to one of the high flyers in our line,” said the other. “A man so well considered.”
“Of such consequence, do you mean?”
“Well, maybe I have not used the right word, but then I am only a poor smith, and you are the master smith for the master of France. I say,” he went on in another tone, “it can’t be always funny to have a king for a ‘prentice, eh?”
“Why not?”
“Plain enough. You cannot eternally be wearing gloves to say to the mate on your bench: ‘Chuck us the hammer or pass the retail file along.'”
“Certainly not.”
“I suppose you have to say: ‘Please your gracious Majesty, don’t hold the drill askew.'”
“Why, that is just the charm with him, d’ye see, for he is a plain-dealer at heart. Once in the forge, when he has the anvil to the fore, and the leathern apron tied on, none would ever take him for the Son of St. Louis, as he is called.”
“Indeed you are right, it is astonishing how much he is like the next man.”
“And yet these perking courtiers are a long time seeing that.”
“It would be nothing if those close around him found that out,” said the stranger, “but those who are at a distance are beginning to get an idea of it.”
His queer laugh made Gamain look at him with marked astonishment. But he saw that he had blundered in his pretended character by making a witticism, and gave the man no time to study his sentence, for he hastened to recur to the topic by saying:
“A good thing, too; for I think it lowers a man to have to slaver him with Your Majesty here and My Noble Sire there.”
“But you do not have to call him high names. Once in the workshop we drop all that stuff. I call him Citizen, and he calls me Gamain, but I ain’t what you would call chummy with him, while heis familiar with me.”
