double-dealing.  You would therefore do better for yourself by keeping well with us instead of clamoring for your pay in advance,—­all the more because Monsieur Rigou, who is not legally bound to give you seven and a half per cent and the interest on your interest, will make you in court a legal tender of your twenty thousand francs, and you will not be able to touch that money until your suit, prolonged by legal trickery, shall be decided by the court at Ville-aux-Fayes.  But if you act wisely you will find that when Monsieur Rigou gets possession of your pavilion at Les Aigues, you will have very nearly thirty thousand francs in his hands and thirty thousand more which the said Rigou may entrust to you,—­which will be all the more advantageous to you then because the peasantry will have flung them themselves upon the estate of Les Aigues, divided into small lots like the poverty of the world.’  That’s what Monsieur Gaubertin might say to you.  As for me, I have nothing to say, for it is none of my business.  Gaubertin and I have our own quarrel with that son of the people who is ashamed of his own father, and we follow our own course.  If my friend Gaubertin feels the need of using you, I don’t; I need no one, for everybody is at my command.  As to the Keeper of the Seals, that functionary is often changed; whereas we—­WE are always here, and can bide our time.”

“Well, I’ve warned you,” returned Sibilet, feeling like a donkey under a pack-saddle.

“Warned me of what?” said Rigou, artfully.

“Of what the Shopman is going to do,” answered the steward, humbly.  “He started for the Prefecture in a rage.”

“Let him go!  If the Montcornets and their kind didn’t use wheels, what would become of the carriage-makers?”

“I shall bring you three thousand francs to-night,” said Sibilet, “but you ought to make over some of your maturing mortgages to me,—­say, one or two that would secure to me good lots of land.”

“Well, there’s that of Courtecuisse.  I myself want to be easy on him because he is the best shot in the canton; but if I make over his mortgage to you, you will seem to be harassing him on the Shopman’s account, and that will be killing two birds with one stone; when Courtecuisse finds himself a beggar, like Fourchon, he’ll be capable of anything.  Courtecuisse has ruined himself on the Bachelerie; he has cultivated all the land, and trained fruit on the walls.  The little property is now worth four thousand francs, and the count will gladly pay you that to get possession of the three acres that jut right into his land.  If Courtecuisse were not such an idle hound he could have paid his interest with the game he might have killed there.”

“Well, transfer the mortgage to me, and I’ll make my butter out of it; the count shall buy the three acres, and I shall get the house and garden for nothing.”

“What are you going to give me out of it?”

“Good heavens! you’d milk an ox!” exclaimed Sibilet,—­“when I have just done you such a service, too.  I have at last got the Shopman to enforce the laws about gleaning—­”