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The dames and damsels vaulted on their barbs, and genets, and thorough-bred hacks, with such airy majesty; they were absolutely overwhelming with their bewildering habits and their bewitching hats.
But the genets had other and private business, and they parted from the mongoose with no more than a snarl, the two genets to appear next or, rather, to be no more than guessed at crossing the last stretch of moonlight between them and the fowlhouse.
"Another carriage and why?" we meekly queried, warned by this friendly hint. A chorus now arose from the entire audience. "Mais, madame! it is as much as five or six kilos over the sands to the Mont from Genets!" was cried out in a tone of universal reproach. "Through rivers, madame, through rivers as high as that!" and Auguste, striking in after the chorus, measured himself off at the breast.
Then, with fine discrimination, she ate the breast and thigh, and later might, or might not, have let him have a look in, if some blotched shape had not slid up, without sound, across the blue black night sky, and, halting in the tree, begun, apparently, to crack nuts very sharply and very quickly. Whereupon, without saying anything, the genets faded out.
Finally she collapsed as suddenly as a pricked bladder, and lay still a great, mixed-up feathery heap, limp and pathetic, with her vast flung-out wings. The two genets backed away, glad enough to be done with such a fiery, feathered fury. The male genet stumbled a little, and sat down. He was nearly as red as the sun on a stormy dawn, but all the blood was not his.
Civets, genets, and ichneumons are small as compared with most cats; they are fairly well distinguished by skull and tooth characters; their claws are never fully retractile, and many have scent glands, as in the civets. No member of this family is American.
That was the key-note of the way the coast spoke of the Mont. The rock out yonder was a country apart, a bit of land or stone the shore claimed not, had no part in, felt to be as remote as if it were a foreign province. At Genets the village spoke of the Mont as one talks of a distant land. Even the journey over the sands was looked upon with a certain seriousness.
At the end of that period there fell upon their stupefied ears the sound as if some one unseen were cracking nuts nut after nut, very quickly in the blackness, and both genets very nearly had a fit a motionless one on the spot. Then they knew, most entirely did they know, and the knowledge gave them no end of a fright. It was the giant eagle-owl.
Genets was quite right; the Mont over yonder was another country; even at the very beginning of the journey we learned so much.
"And then ces dames must descend at Genets, to cross the greve, tu sais" interpolated the waiter, excitedly changing his napkin, his wand of office, from one armpit to the other. The thought of travel stirred his blood. It was fine to start off thus, without having to make the necessary arrangements for a winter's service or a summer's season.
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