“Mauprat,” he said, crossing his arms on his breast and looking at me fixedly, “you have now been punished; you have now been insulted, my fine gentleman; that is enough for me.  As you see, I might easily prevent you from ever harming me by stopping your breath with a touch of my finger, and burying you under the stone at my door.  Who would think of coming to Gaffer Patience to look for this fine child of noble blood?  But, as you may also see, I am not fond of vengeance; at the first cry of pain that escaped you, I stopped.  No; I don’t like to cause suffering; I’m not a Mauprat.  Still, it was well for you to learn by experience what is to be a victim.  May this disgust you of the hangman’s trade, which had been handed down from father to son in your family.  Good-evening!  You can go now; I no longer bear you malice; the justice of God is satisfied.  You can tell your uncles to put me on their gridiron; they will have a tough morsel to eat; and they will swallow flesh that will come to life again in their gullets and choke them.”

Then he picked up the dead owl, and looking at it sadly: 

“A peasant’s child would not have done this,” he said.  “This is sport for gentle blood.”

As he retired to his door he gave utterance to an exclamation which escaped him only on solemn occasions, and from which he derived his curious surname: 

“Patience, patience!” he cried.

This, according to the gossips, was a cabalistic formula of his; and whenever he had been heard to pronounce it, some misfortune had happened to the individual who had offended him.  Sylvain crossed himself to ward off the evil spirit.  The terrible words resounded through the tower into which Patience had just withdrawn, then the door closed behind him with a bang.

My comrade was so eager to be off that he was within an ace of leaving me there bound to the tree.  As soon as he had released me, he exclaimed: 

“A sign of the cross!  For God’s sake, a sign of the cross!  If you don’t cross yourself you are bewitched; we shall be devoured by wolves as we go, or else we shall meet the great monster.”

“Idiot!” I said; “I have something else to think about.  Listen; if you are ever unlucky enough to tell a single soul of what has happened, I will strangle you.”

“Alas! sir, what am I to do?” he replied with a mixture of innocence and malice.  “The sorcerer said I was to tell my parents.”

I raised my fist to strike him, but my strength failed.  Choking with rage at the treatment I had just undergone, I fell down almost in a faint, and Sylvain seized the opportunity for flight.

When I came to I found myself alone.  I did not know this part of Varenne; I had never been here before, and it was horribly wild.  All through the day I had seen tracks of wolves and wild boars in the sand.  And now night had come and I was still two leagues from Roche-Mauprat.  The gate would be shut, the drawbridge up; and I should get a bullet through me if I tried to enter after nine o’clock.  As I did not know the way, it was a hundred to one against my doing the two leagues in an hour.  However, I would have preferred to die a thousand deaths rather than ask shelter of the man in Gazeau Tower, even had he granted it gracefully.  My pride was bleeding more than my flesh.