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Updated: June 9, 2025
"Things are not ripe for it," said old Fourchon. "We should risk too much, my children. The best way is to make ourselves look miserable and cry famine; then the Shopman and his wife will want to help us, and you'll get more out of them that way than you will by gleaning."
Every one recognized the vinous voice of old Fourchon, to whom the verse must have been peculiarly agreeable; Mouche accompanied in his treble tones. "Ha! they're full!" cried old Mother Tonsard to her daughter-in-law; "your father is as red as a grid-iron, and that chip o' the block as pink as vine-shoot." "Your healths!" cried the old man, "and a fine lot of scoundrels you are!
"A servant, to begin with," returned Fourchon, "because then he'll see his masters close by, and learn something; he'll complete his education, I'll warrant you. Good example will be a fortune to him, with the law on his side like the rest of you.
It was easy to see from the glance he threw at the old man that the threat had reached his ears, and all Fourchon's insolence sank in a moment. The look produced precisely the same effect upon him that the eye of a policeman produces on a thief. Fourchon knew he was wrong, and that Michaud might very well accuse him of saying these things merely to terrify the inhabitants of Les Aigues.
Whenever a visitor comes to Les Aigues, Pere Fourchon sets himself on the watch, and if the gentleman goes to see the sources of the Avonne he sells him the otter; he plays the trick so well that Monsieur le comte has been here three times and paid him for six days' work, just to stare at the water!" "Heavens!" thought Blondet. "And I imagined I had seen the greatest comedians of the present day!
"Look here, my boy, do you know whether Monsieur and Madame have separate rooms?" "Of course; if they didn't, Monsieur wouldn't be so fond of Madame." "Is that all you know?" said Fourchon. As they were now before the kitchen windows nothing more was said.
"Rigou is thinking as much about you as a cook thinks of the gudgeons he is frying in his pan," called out Fourchon. "Take the clapper out of your throat when you are drunk," said Mouche, pulling his grandfather by the blouse, and tumbling him down on a bank under a poplar tree. "If that hound of a mayor heard you say that, he'd never buy any more of your tales."
He worked the peasants like puppets by hidden wires, the handling of which amused him as though it were a game of chess where the pawns were alive, the knights caracoled, the bishops, like Fourchon, gabbled, the feudal castles shone in the sun, and the queen maliciously checkmated the king.
"It was Michaud's testimony which got her that." One Saturday evening, Courtecuisse, Bonnebault, Godain, Tonsard, his daughters, wife, and Pere Fourchon, also Vaudoyer and several mechanics were supping at the tavern. The moon was at half-full, the first snow had melted, and frost had just stiffened the ground so that a man's step left no traces.
I myself want to be easy on him because he is the best shot in the canton; but if I make over his mortgage to you, you will seem to be harassing him on the Shopman's account, and that will be killing two birds with one stone; when Courtecuisse finds himself a beggar, like Fourchon, he'll be capable of anything.
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