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Little White sat upon a bank of turf on the opposite side of the way looking very stern and sad. To each new-comer he put the same question: "Did you come here to go to old Poquelin's?" "Yes." "He's dead." And if the shocked hearer started away he would say: "Don't go away." "Why not?" "I want you to go to the funeral presently."
"Ha! that is all very well," quoth the Jean-Baptistes, fueling the reproach of an enterprise that asked neither co-operation nor advice of them, "but wait till they come yonder to Jean Poquelin's marsh; ha! ha! ha!"
It was bold strategy, and yet, there was no denying it, little White felt that he was frightened. "It is not a ghost," he said to himself. "I know it cannot be a ghost;" but the perspiration burst out at every pore, and the air seemed to thicken with heat. "It is a living man," he said in his thoughts. "I hear his footstep, and I hear old Poquelin's footsteps, too, separately, over on the veranda.
Majesty hearing of this, ordered his en cas de nuit to be placed on the table, and positively cut off a wing with his own knife and fork for Poquelin's use. O thrice happy Jean Baptiste!
Do you not see our pease and beans dying, our cabbages and lettuce going to seed and our gardens turning to dust, while every day you can see it raining in the woods? The rain will never pass old Poquelin's house. He keeps a fetich. He has conjured the whole Faubourg St. Marie. And why, the old wretch? Simply because our playful and innocent children call after him as he passes."
A canal was first dug through the marsh, the small one which passed so close to Jean Poquelin's house was filled, and the street, or rather a sunny road, just touched a corner of the old mansion's dooryard. The morass ran dry. Its venomous denizens slipped away through the bulrushes; the cattle roaming freely upon its hardened surface trampled the superabundant undergrowth.
A Director remarked that the Secretary looked as though he had waked from a nightmare. "Well, sir, if you want to know the fact, I have; and if you choose to cultivate old Poquelin's society you can have one, too." "White," called a facetious member, but White did not notice. "White," he called again. "What?" demanded White, with a scowl. "Did you see the ghost?"
When I have them I start' to come home; then I got to pas' at Jean Poquelin's house." "Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the other, throwing his leg over the arm of his chair. "Wait," said the interpreter. "I come along slow, not making some noises; still, still" "And scared," said the smiling one. "Mais, wait. I get all pas' the 'ouse. 'Ah! I say; 'all right! Then I see two thing' before! Hah!
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