“This must be well matured,” replied the soldier.

“Oh! it’s quite ripe,” said the advocate.  “The cousin gone to the devil, the heritage would then be between us two.”

“I’m quite agreeable,” said the fighter, “but we must stick as close together as the two legs of the same body, for if you are fine as silk, I as strong as steel, and daggers are always as good as traps —­you hear that, my good brother.”

“Yes,” said the advocate, “the cause is heard—­now shall it be the thread or the iron?”

“Eh? ventre de Dieu! is it then a king that we are going to settle?  For a simple numskull of a shepherd are so many words necessary?  Come! 20,000 francs out of the Heritage to the one of us who shall first cut him off:  I’ll say to him in good faith, ‘Pick up your head.’”

“And I, ‘Swim my friend,’” cried the advocate, laughing like the gap of a pourpoint.

And then they went to supper, the captain to his wench, and the advocate to the house of a jeweller’s wife, of whom he was the lover.

Who was astonished?  Chiquon!  The poor shepherd heard the planning of his death, although the two cousins had walked in the parvis, and talked to each other as every one speaks at church when praying to God.  So that Chiquon was much coupled to know if the words had come up or if his ears had gone down.

“Do you hear, Mister Canon?”

“Yes,” said he, “I hear the wood crackling in the fire.”

“Ho, ho!” replied Chiquon, “if I don’t believe in the devil, I believe in St. Michael, my guardian angel; I go there where he calls me.”

“Go, my child,” said the canon, “and take care not to wet yourself, nor to get your head knocked off, for I think I hear more rain, and the beggars in the street are not always the most dangerous beggars.”

At these words Chiquon was much astonished, and stared at the canon; found his manner gay, his eye sharp, and his feet crooked; but as he had to arrange matters concerning the death which menaced him, he thought to himself that he would always have leisure to admire the canon, or to cut his nails, and he trotted off quickly through the town, as a little woman trots towards her pleasure.

His two cousins having no presumption of the divinatory science, of which shepherds have had many passing attacks, had often talked before him of their secret goings on, counting him as nothing.

Now one evening, to amuse the canon, Pille-grue had recounted to him how had fallen in love with him a wife of a jeweller on whose head he had adjusted certain carved, burnished, sculptured, historical horns, fit for the brow of a prince.  The good lady was to hear him, a right merry wench, quick at opportunities, giving an embrace while her husband was mounting the stairs, devouring the commodity as if she was swallowing a a strawberry, only thinking of love-making, always trifling and frisky, gay as an honest woman who lacks nothing, contenting her husband, who cherished her so much as he loved his own gullet; subtle as a perfume, so much so, that for five years she managed so well with his household affairs, and her own love affairs, that she had the reputation of a prudent woman, the confidence of her husband, the keys of the house, the purse, and all.