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"A pretty wise thing for themselves," replied Vermichel. "Faith! you'll have to give in, in the end. How can you help it? They've got the power. For the last two years haven't they had three foresters and a horse-patrol, all as active as ants, and a field-keeper who is a terror? Besides, the gendarmerie is ready to do their dirty work at any time. They'll crush you "
"Ought to have stayed in the army, a swaggerer like that," said Tonsard; "he is only fit to deal with enemies. I wish he would come and ask me my name. He may call himself a veteran of the young guard, but I know very well that if I measured spurs with him, I'd keep my feathers up longest." "Look here!" said Mam Tonsard to Vermichel, "when are the notices for the ball at Soulanges coming out?
Vermichel's name was Michel Vert, but the transposition was so generally used that Brunet, the clerk of the municipal court of Soulanges, was in the habit of writing Michel-Jean-Jerome Vert, called Vermichel, practitioner.
They told him of Vatel's attack on the old woman, talking all at once after the fashion of country-people. "If she didn't cut the tree, Vatel was wrong; but if she did cut it, you have done two bad actions," said Pere Niseron. "Take some wine," said Tonsard, offering a full glass to the old man. "Shall we start?" said Vermichel to the sheriff's officer.
Though quickly and lightly done, the old man might, perhaps, have felt the theft, if Vermichel had not happened to appear at that moment. "Tonsard, do you know where you father is?" called that functionary from the foot of the steps. Vermichel's shout, the theft of the money, and the emptying of old Fourchon's glass, were simultaneous.
"Bah!" said Tonsard, "we are too flat. That which can't be crushed isn't the trees, it's ground." "Don't you trust to that," said Fourchon to his son-in-law; "you own property." "Those rich folks must love you," continued Vermichel, "for they think of nothing else from morning till night!
All this luxury, required by the town of Soulanges where Vermichel fulfilled the combined functions of porter at the town-hall, drummer, jailer, musician, and practitioner, was taken care of by Madame Vermichel, an alarming antagonist of Rabelaisian philosophy.
Ha! see what it is to struggle against those bourgeois fellows, who have made so many laws since they got into power that they've a law to enforce every trick they play " A violent hiccough gave a sudden turn to the ideas of the distinguished orator. "If Vermichel were only here I'd blow in his gullet, and he'd get an idea of sherry wine. Hey! what a wine it is!
Pere Fourchon therefore added to his other avocations that of witness, or practitioner of legal papers, whenever the Sieur Brunet came to draw them in the districts of Cerneux, Conches, and Blangy. Vermichel and Fourchon, allied by a friendship of twenty years' tippling, might really be considered a business firm.
Vermichel, a famous violin in the Burgundian regiment of former days, had procured for Pere Fourchon, in recognition of certain services, a situation as practitioner, which in remote country-places usually devolves on those who are able to sign their name.
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