“Is that all you know?” said Fourchon.

As they were now before the kitchen windows nothing more was said.

CHAPTER V

Enemiesface to face

While breakfast was in progress at the chateau, Francois, the head footman, whispered to Blondet, but loud enough for the general to overhear him,—­

“Monsieur, Pere Fourchon’s boy is here; he says they have caught the otter, and wants to know if you would like it, or whether they shall take it to the sub-prefect at Ville-aux-Fayes.”

Emile Blondet, though himself a past-master of hoaxing, could not keep his cheeks from blushing like those of a virgin who hears an indecorous story of which she knows the meaning.

“Ha! ha! so you have hunted the otter this morning with Pere Fourchon?” cried the general, with a roar of laughter.

“What is it?” asked the countess, uneasy at her husband’s laugh.

“When a man of wit and intelligence is taken in by old Fourchon,” continued the general, “a retired cuirassier need not blush for having hunted that otter; which bears an enormous resemblance to the third posthorse we are made to pay for and never see.”  With that he went off into further explosions of laughter, in the midst of which he contrived to say:  “I am not surprised you had to change your boots —­and your trousers; I have no doubt you have been wading!  The joke didn’t go as far as that with me,—­I stayed on the bank; but then, you know, you are so much more intelligent than I—­”

“But you forget,” interrupted Madame de Montcornet, “that I do not know what you are talking of.”

At these words, said with some pique, the general grew serious, and Blondet told the story of his fishing for the otter.

“But if they really have an otter,” said the countess, “those poor people are not to blame.”

“Oh, but it is ten years since an otter has been seen about here,” said the pitiless general.

“Monsieur le comte,” said Francois, “the boy swears by all that’s sacred that he has got one.”

“If they have one I’ll buy it,” said the general.

“I don’t suppose,” remarked the Abbe Brossette, “that God has condemned Les Aigues to never have otters.”

“Ah, Monsieur le cure!” cried Blondet, “if you bring the Almighty against me—­”

“But what is all this?  Who is here?” said the countess, hastily.

“Mouche, madame,—­the boy who goes about with old Fourchon,” said the footman.

“Bring him in—­that is, if Madame will allow it?” said the general; “he may amuse you.”

Mouche presently appeared, in his usual state of comparative nudity.  Beholding this personification of poverty in the middle of this luxurious dining-room, the cost of one panel of which would have been a fortune to the bare-legged, bare-breasted, and bare-headed child, it was impossible not to be moved by an impulse of charity.  The boy’s eyes, like blazing coals, gazed first at the luxuries of the room, and then at those on the table.