But he pretended to hear, moreover, to guess to whom they were alluding.  He seemed as happy, and glad to look about him as he usually did, with half open lips and smiling eyes.  As usual, he wore an enormous cap with variegated ribbons, and large petticoats as usual, he walked with short, mincing steps, swaying and wriggling his hips and crupper, and he gesticulated like a coquette, and licked his lips, when they called him Mademoiselle, while in his head, he would have liked too have jumped at the throat of those who called him so.

Days and months passed, and by degrees these about him forgot all about his strange escapade, but he had never left off thinking about it, nor trying to find out, for which he was ever on the alert—­how he could find out what were his qualities as a boy, and how could he assert them victoriously.  Really innocent, he had reached the age of twenty without knowing anything about it, or without ever having any natural impulse to discover it, but being tenacious of purpose, curious and dissembling, he asked no questions, but observed all that was said and done.

Often at their village dances, he had heard young fellows boasting about girls whom they had seduced, and praising such and such a young fellow, and often, also, after a dance, he saw the couples go away together, with their arms round each other’s waists.  They had no suspicions of him, and he listened and watched, until, at last, he discovered what was going on.

And, then, one night, when dancing was over, and the couples were going away with their arms round each other’s waists, a terrible screaming was heard at the corner of the woods through which those going to the next village, had to pass.  It was Josephine, pretty Josephine, for she was brave as well, and when her screams were heard, they ran to her assistance, and they arrived only just in time to rescue her, half strangled from Mademoiselle’s clutches.

The idiot had watched her, and had thrown himself upon her in order to treat her as the other young fellows did the girls, but she resisted him so stoutly that he took her by the throat and squeezed with all his might until she could not breathe, and was nearly dead.

In rescuing Josephine from him, they had thrown him on the ground, but he jumped up again immediately, foaming at the mouth and slobbering, and exclaimed: 

“I am not a girl any longer, I am a young man, I am a young man, I tell you.”

And he proudly essayed to convince them that it was so, but the evidence that he could adduce was very slight.

THE MOUNTEBANKS