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"Thanks to Saint-Labre," he said, "to whom I owe a candle, the Gars is safe. Don't forget that we now owe three candles to the saint." He seized a beaker of cider and emptied it at a draught without drawing breath. When his wife had served his soup and taken his gun and he himself was seated on the wooden bench, he said, looking at the fire: "I can't make out how the Blues got here.
Behind the Virgin a hideous image, daubed with red and blue under pretence of painting, represented Saint-Labre. A green serge bed of the shape called "tomb," a clumsy cradle, a spinning-wheel, common chairs, and a carved chest on which lay utensils, were about the whole of Galope-Chopine's domestic possessions.
Remember," she cried, in a solemn voice, "your father's shoe; never put on your own without remembering how the Chouans filled it with his blood, and kill the Chouans!" She swayed her head with so convulsive an action that the meshes of her black hair fell upon her neck and gave a sinister expression to her face. "I call Saint-Labre to witness," she said, "that I vow you to the Blues.
"Cousin," he said, imploringly, "since I am speaking to you as I would to my confessor, I do assure you, by the holy name of God, that I have nothing to reproach myself with except for having, now and then, buttered my bread on both sides; and I call on Saint-Labre, who is there over the chimney-piece, to witness that I have never said one word about the Gars.
She looked at the gaiters and goatskins of his men, then she caught her boy in her arms, and sat down on the ground, saying, "May the holy Virgin of Auray and the ever blessed Saint-Labre have pity upon us! Those men are not ours; their shoes have no nails in them.
The hapless man knocked against the wooden bedstead of his son, and several five-franc pieces rolled on the floor. Pille-Miche picked them up. "Ho! ho! the Blues paid you in new money," cried Marche-a-Terre. "As true as that's the image of Saint-Labre," said Galope-Chopine, "I have told nothing. Barbette mistook the Fougeres men for the gars of Saint-Georges, and that's the whole of it."
"Patience," replied Marche-a-Terre; "if I examined right this morning, we must be at the foot of the Papegaut tower between the ramparts and the Promenade, that place where they put the manure; it is like a feather-bed to fall on." "If Saint-Labre," remarked Pille-Miche, "would only change into cider the blood we shall shed to-night the citizens might lay in a good stock to-morrow."
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