“And what have you done?” she asked.

“I have sent for the gendarmes.”

This Polyte was a laborer, who had been employed on the farm for a few days, and who had been dismissed by Lecacheur for an insolent answer.  He was an old soldier, and was supposed to have retained his habits of marauding and debauchery, from his campaigns in Africa.  He did anything for a livelihood, but whether he were a mason, a navvy, a reaper, whether he broke stones or lopped trees, he was always lazy, and so he remained nowhere, and he had, at times, to change his neighborhood to obtain work.

From the first day that he came to the farm, Lecacheur’s wife had detested him, and now she was sure that he had committed the robbery.

In about half an hour the two gendarmes arrived.  Brigadier Senateur was very tall and thin, and Gendarme Lenient, short and fat.  Lecacheur made them sit down and told them the affair, and then they went and saw the scene of the theft, in order to verify the fact that the hutch had been broken open, and to collect all the proofs they could.  When they got back to the kitchen, the mistress brought in some wine, filled their glasses and asked with a distrustful look.

“Shall you catch him?”

The brigadier, who had his sword between his legs, appeared thoughtful.  Certainly, he was sure of taking him, if he was pointed out to him, but if not, he could not answer for being able to discover him, himself, and after reflecting for a long time, he put this simple question: 

“Do you know the thief?”

And Lecacheur replied, with a look of Normandy slyness in his eyes: 

“As for knowing him, I do not, as I did not see him commit the robbery.  If I had seen him, I should have made him eat it raw, skin and flesh, without a drop of cider to wash it down.  But as for saying who it is, I cannot, although I believe it is that good-for-nothing Polyte.”

Then he related at length his troubles with Polyte, his leaving his service, his bad reputation, things which had been told him, accumulating insignificant and minute proofs, and then, the brigadier, who had been listening very attentively while he emptied his glass and filled it again, with an indifferent air, turned to his gendarme and said: 

“We must go and look in the cottage of Severin’s wife.”  At which the gendarme smiled and nodded three times.

Then Madame Lecacheur came to them, and very quietly, with all a peasant’s cunning, questioned the brigadier in her turn.  That shepherd Severin, a simpleton, a sort of a brute who had been brought up and grown up among his bleating flocks, and who knew scarcely anything besides them in the world, had nevertheless preserved the peasant’s instinct for saving, at the bottom of his heart.  For years and years he must have hidden in hollow trees and crevices in the rocks, all that he earned, either as shepherd, or by curing animal’s sprains (for the bone-setter’s secret had been handed down to him by the old shepherd whose place he took), by touch or word, and one day he bought a small property consisting of a cottage and a field, for three thousand francs.