“He keeps her for them, as well as his dogs,” they said jeeringly.  “You can see that he is a born cuckold with his yellow beard and eyebrows, which stick up like a pair of horns.”

His hair was certainly red, or rather yellow, his thick eyebrows were turned up in two points on his temples, and he used to twirl them mechanically as if they had been a pair of moustaches.  And certainly, with his hair like that, and with his long beard and shaggy eyebrows, with his sallow face, blinking eyes, and dull looks, with his dogged mouth, thin lips, and his miserable, deformed body, he was not a pleasing object.

But he assuredly was not a complaisant cuckold, and those who have said that of him had never seen him at home.  On the contrary, he was always jealous, and kept as sharp a lookout on his wife as he did on his dogs, and if he had broken her in at all, it was to be as faithful to him as they were.

She was a handsome, and what they call in the country, a fine body of a woman; tall, well-built, with a full bust and broad breech, and she certainly made more than one excise man squint at her, but it was no use for them to come and sniff round her too closely, or else there would have been blows.  At least, that is what the custom-house officers said when anybody joked with them and said to them:  “That does not matter, no doubt, you and she have hunted for your fleas together.”

It was no use for them to defend Madame Bistaud’s fierce virtue; nobody believed them, and the only answer they got was:  “You are hiding your game, and are ashamed of going to seduce a woman who belongs to such a wretched creature.”

And, certainly, nobody would have believed that such a buxom woman, who looked as if her crupper were as warm as her looks, and who assuredly must have liked to be well attended to, could be satisfied with such a puny husband; with such an ugly, weak, red-headed fellow, who smelled of his own hair and of the mustiness of the carrion which he gave to his hounds.

But they did not know that “the man with the dogs” had some years before given her, once for all, a lesson in fidelity, and that for a mere trifle, and that for a venial sin!  He had surprised her for allowing herself to be kissed by some gallant; that was all!  He had not taken any notice, but when the man was gone he brought two of his hounds into the room, and said: 

“If you do not want them to tear your inside out as they would a rabbit’s, go down on your knees so that I may thrash you!”

She obeyed in terror, and “the man with the dogs” had beaten her with a whip until his arm dropped with fatigue.  And she did not venture to scream, although she was bleeding under the blows of the thong, which tore her dress, and cut into the flesh; all she dared to do was to utter low, hoarse groans; for while beating her, he kept on saying: 

“Don’t make a noise, by ——­; don’t make a noise, or I will let the dogs fly at your stern.”