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"Never! never!" cried the poor boy, whose hair stood up with fright. "Then pack your bundle quickly, and be off; I turn you away!" "You turn me away!" repeated young Faribole, lifting up his hands to the sky. "I do not give you five minutes to be gone; you depend upon me here, solely on me." The unhappy Faribole began to weep, and the steward added, in a savage voice, "Come, now! no faces!
He imagined that the cat, so many times saved, was a fantastic being, capable of speaking, like the beasts in the fairy-tales, and he said to himself with a shiver: "I am lost! Moumouth is going to denounce me!" As soon as Madame de la Grenouillère learned how Moumouth had been recovered, she ordered young Faribole to be brought before her.
"How is it in your house, then?" "I have it from a little boy named Faribole; he got this cat for me, which I have long desired to have, on account of his supernatural shape and appearance, to figure in my cabalistic conjurations. This is the truth, the whole truth. I beg of you that your mistress will not disturb me."
Without allowing himself to be confused, Faribole commenced in these terms: "It is necessary to avow it, madame; I entered into your service with the intention of stealing your cat; the fortune-teller wished to have him, to make him play the part of the devil Astaroth; and she had seduced me by the promise of a crown of six livres and a pair of shoes.
Mother Michel took up her residence near her sister, provided handsomely for all the children, and selected for her own retreat a pretty cottage situated in Low-Breton upon the banks of the river among the green trees. Faribole, received again into the service of Madame de la Grenouillère, conducted himself so well that his transient error was forgotten.
Inn-keepers give them to their customers to eat; the most celebrated surgeons massacre them in making certain experiments. Cats are thought so little of, that when a litter of six or seven are born, only one is kept; the rest are tossed into the river." "But Moumouth is large, Moumouth is fully grown," said Faribole in a plaintive tone; "and then, you do not know, I love him."
A beating rain, mixed with hailstones, pattered against the window-panes, and the wind swept with a mournful sound through the halls of the house. Then poor Faribole thought of the cold that would seize him, of the privations which awaited him, of his few resources, of his immense appetite, and how disagreeable it was to sleep on the damp earth.
"You love him! you dare to love him!" cried the steward with inexpressible rage. "Very well! I I detest him, and I wish his death!" "But what has he done to you, then?" "What business is that to you? I desire his death, and that's enough." "Mercy for him!" cried Faribole, throwing himself at the feet of hard-hearted Lustucru.
Lustucru had fixed the following day for the cruel execution of Moumouth, for he knew that Mother Michel on that day was to carry to the express office a package destined for her sister. All the forenoon and afternoon Faribole was plunged in the darkest despondency, and when the fatal hour sounded, he was assailed by the irresolutions of the previous day.
The response to this question was long coming; Faribole turned pale, his legs bent under him; finally he bowed his head, letting his arms droop at his sides, as if he had sunk under the weight of his destiny, and murmured, in a stifled voice: "Yes, Monsieur Lustucru."
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