As it grew louder and louder, and seemed to be approaching them, the women manifested some alarm.

“Oh!” shrieked Serafina “I hope it’s not a snake; I shall die if it is; I am so terrified by the horrid, crawling creatures.”

“But it can’t possibly be a snake,” said Leander, reassuringly; “in such cold weather as this the snakes are all torpid and lying in their holes underground, stiffer than so many sticks.”

“Leander is right,” added the pedant, “this cannot be a snake; and besides, snakes never make such a sound as that at any time.  It must proceed from some wild creature of the wood that our invasion has disturbed; perhaps we may be lucky enough to capture it and find it edible; that would be a piece of good fortune, indeed, quite like a fairy-tale.”

Meantime Scapin was listening attentively to the strange, incomprehensible sound, and watching keenly that part of the thicket from which it seemed to come.  Presently a movement of the underbrush became noticeable, and just as he motioned to the company to keep perfectly quiet a magnificent big gander emerged from the bushes, stretching out his long neck, hissing with all his might, and waddling along with a sort of stupid majesty that was most diverting—­closely followed by two geese, his good, simple-minded, confiding wives, in humble attendance upon their infuriated lord and master.

“Don’t stir, any of you,” said Scapin, under his breath, and I will endeavour to capture this splendid prize”—­with which the clever scamp crept softly round behind his companions, who were still seated in a circle on the rug, so lightly that he made not the slightest sound; and while the gander—­who with his two followers had stopped short at sight of the intruders—­was intently examining them, with some curiosity mingled with his angry defiance, and apparently wondering in his stupid way how these mysterious figures came to be in that usually deserted spot, Scapin succeeded, by making a wide detour, in getting behind the three geese unseen, and noiselessly advancing upon them, with one rapid, dexterous movement, threw his large heavy cloak over the coveted prize.  In another instant he had the struggling gander, still enveloped in the cloak, in his arms, and, by compressing his neck tightly, quickly put an end to his resistance—­and his existence at the same time; while his two wives, or rather widows, rushed back into the thick underbrush to avoid a like fate, making a great cackling and ado over the terrible catastrophe that had befallen their quondam lord and master.

“Bravo, Scapin! that was a clever trick indeed,” cried Herode; “it throws those you are so often applauded for on the stage quite into the shade—­a masterpiece of strategy, friend Scapin!—­for, as is well known, geese are by nature very vigilant, and never caught off their guard—­of which history gives us a notable instance, in the watchfulness of the sacred geese of the Capitol, whose loud cackling in the dead of night at the stealthy approach of the Gauls woke the sleeping soldiers to a sense of their danger just in time to save Rome.  This splendid big fellow here saves us—­after another fashion it is true, but one which is no less providential.”