“Marie,” said Tonsard, gravely, “above the board you’ll find some bottled wine.  Go and get a bottle.”

Wine is of only one quality in the country, but it is sold as of two kinds,—­cask wine and bottled wine.

“Where did you get this, papa” demanded La Tonsard, slipping the coin into her pocket.

“Philippine! you’ll come to a bad end,” said the old man, shaking his head but not attempting to recover his money.  Doubtless he had long realized the futility of a struggle between his daughter, his terrible son-in-law, and himself.

“Another bottle of wine for which you get five francs out of me,” he added, in a peevish tone.  “But it shall be the last.  I shall give my custom to the Cafe de la Paix.”

“Hold your tongue, papa!” remarked his fair and fat daughter, who bore some resemblance to a Roman matron.  “You need a shirt, and a pair of clean trousers, and a hat; and I want to see you with a waistcoat.  That’s what I take the money for.”

“I have told you again and again that such things would ruin me,” said the old man.  “People would think me rich and stop giving me anything.”

The bottle brought by Marie put an end to the loquacity of the old man, who was not without that trait, characteristic of those whose tongues are ready to tell out everything, and who shrink from no expression of their thought, no matter how atrocious it may be.

“Then you don’t want to tell where you filched that money?” said Tonsard.  “We might go and get more where that came from,—­the rest of us.”

He was making a snare, and as he finished it the ferocious innkeeper happened to glance at his father-in-law’s trousers, and there he spied a raised round spot which clearly defined a second five-franc piece.

“Having become a capitalist I drink your health,” said Pere Fourchon.

“If you choose to be a capitalist you can be,” said Tonsard; “you have the means, you have!  But the devil has bored a hole in the back of your head through which everything runs out.”

“Hey!  I only played the otter trick on that young fellow they have got at Les Aigues.  He’s from Paris.  That’s all there is to it.”

“If crowds of people would come to see the sources of the Avonne, you’d be rich, Grandpa Fourchon,” said Marie.

“Yes,” he said, drinking the last glassful the bottle contained, “and I’ve played the sham otter so long, the live otters have got angry, and one of them came right between my legs to-day; Mouche caught it, and I am to get twenty francs for it.”

“I’ll bet your otter is made of tow,” said Tonsard, looking slyly at his father-in-law.

“If you will give me a pair of trousers, a waistcoat, and some list braces, so as not to disgrace Vermichel on the music stand at Tivoli (for old Socquard is always scolding about my clothes), I’ll let you keep that money, my daughter; your idea is a good one.  I can squeeze that rich young fellow at Les Aigues; may be he’ll take to otters.”