“Did you not say Sunday, at the ‘Femme-sans-Tete’, and in the presence of Thiedot, that all the servants of the chateau were idlers and good-for-nothings, and that if you met one of them who tried to annoy you, you would level him with your plane?”

“If you used the word ‘level,’ it was very uncivil,” observed Rousselet.

“Thiedot had better keep in his own house,” growled the carpenter, clenching his fists.

“It looks well for a tramp like you to insult gentlemen like us,” continued the lackey, in an imposing tone.  “And did you not say that when I took Mademoiselle to mass I looked like a green toad upon the box, ..thus trying to dishonor my physique and my clothes?  Did you not say that?”

“Only a joke about the color of your livery.  They call the others measles and lobsters.”

“Lobsters are lobsters,” replied the coachman, in an imperative tone; “if that vexes them, they can take care of themselves.  But I will not allow any one to attack my honor or that of my beasts by calling them screws—­and that is what you did, you vagabond!  And did you not say that I sent bags of oats to Remiremont to be sold, and that, for a month, my team had steadily been getting thin?  Did you ever hear anything so scandalous, Pere Rousselet? to dare to say that I endanger the lives of my horses?  Did you not say that, you rascal?  And did you not say that Mademoiselle Marianne and I had little private feasts in her room, and that was why I could not eat more at the table?  Here is Rousselet, who has been a doctor and knows that I am on a diet on account of my weak stomach.”  At these words, the servant, carried away by his anger, gave his stomach a blow with his fist.

“Lambernier,” said Rousselet, turning up his lips with a look of contempt, “I must admit that, for a man well brought up, you have made most disgusting remarks.”

“To say that I eat the horses’ oats!” roared the coachman.

“I ought to have said that you drank them,” replied Lambernier, with his usual sneer.

“Rousselet, out of the way!” exclaimed the burly lackey at this new insult; the old peasant not moving as quickly as he desired, he seized him by the arm and sent him whirling ten steps away.

At this moment, a new person completed the scene, joining in it, if not as actor at least as interested spectator.  If the two champions had suspected his presence they would have probably postponed their fight until a more opportune moment, for this spectator was no other than the Baron himself.  As he saw from a distance the trio gesticulating in a very animated manner, he judged that a disorderly scene was in preparation, and as he had wished for a long time to put an end to the quarrelsome ways of the chateau servants, he was not sorry to catch them in the very act, so as to make an example of them.  At first, he stooped and concealed himself in the thickets, ready to appear for the denouement.