The sound of Pere Fourchon’s broken sabots was now heard; after depositing them in the antechamber, he was brought to the door of the dining-room by Francois.  At a sign from the countess, Francois allowed him to pass in, followed by Mouche with his mouth full and carrying the otter, hanging by a string tied to its yellow paws, webbed like those of a palmiped.  He cast upon his four superiors sitting at table, and also upon Sibilet, that look of mingled distrust and servility which serves as a veil to the thoughts of the peasantry; then he brandished his amphibian with a triumphant air.

“Here it is!” he cried, addressing Blondet.

“My otter!” returned the Parisian, “and well paid for.”

“Oh, my dear gentleman,” replied Pere Fourchon, “yours got away; she is now in her burrow, and she won’t come out, for she’s a female, —­this is a male; Mouche saw him coming just as you went away.  As true as you live, as true as that Monsieur le comte covered himself and his cuirassiers with glory at Waterloo, the otter is mine, just as much as Les Aigues belongs to Monseigneur the general.  But the otter is yours for twenty francs; if not I’ll take it to the sub-prefect.  If Monsieur Gourdon thinks it too dear, then I’ll give you the preference; that’s only fair, as we hunted together this morning!”

“Twenty francs!” said Blondet.  “In good French you can’t call that giving the preference.”

“Hey, my dear gentleman,” cried the old fellow.  “Perhaps I don’t know French, and I’ll ask it in good Burgundian; as long as I get the money, I don’t care, I’ll talk Latin:  ‘latinus, latina, latinum’!  Besides, twenty francs is what you promised me this morning.  My children have already stolen the silver you gave me; I wept about it, coming along,—­ask Charles if I didn’t.  Not that I’d arrest ’em for the value of ten francs and have ’em up before the judge, no!  But just as soon as I earn a few pennies, they make me drink and get ’em out of me.  Ah! it is hard, hard to be reduced to go and get my wine elsewhere.  But just see what children are these days!  That’s what we got by the Revolution; it is all for the children now-a-days, and parents are suppressed.  I’m bringing up Mouche on another tack; he loves me, the little scamp,”—­giving his grandson a poke.

“It seems to me you are making him a little thief, like all the rest,” said Sibilet; “he never lies down at night without some sin on his conscience.”

“Ha!  Monsieur Sibilet, his conscience is as clean as yours any day!  Poor child! what can he steal?  A little grass! that’s better than throttling a man!  He don’t know mathematics like you, nor subtraction, nor addition, nor multiplication,—­you are very unjust to us, that you are!  You call us a nest of brigands, but you are the cause of the misunderstandings between our good landlord here, who is a worthy man, and the rest of us, who are all worthy men,—­there ain’t an honester part