United States or Costa Rica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Formerly, their salary was 30 or 40 sous a day: they now ask 4 francs; but, if you purpose to spend a few weeks here, will be glad to serve you for 3. Some are very intelligent; others, very stupid. Most of them are spies of the police; but, as an Englishman in Paris has nothing to conceal, of what consequence is it whether his steps are watched by his own valet-de-place or any other mouchard?
Among the deep blue forests he was still in Fairyland, but at Mouchard the scenery was already changing, and by the time Dole was reached it had completely changed. The train ran on among the plains and vineyards of the Burgundy country towards Laroche and Dijon. The abrupt alteration, however, was pain. His thoughts streamed all backwards now to counteract it.
Monsieur Jourdain, in Moliere's comedy, who expressed such surprise at finding that he had been talking prose for forty years without knowing it, was no more amazed than would Mere Mouchard have been had you announced to her that she was a logician; or that her husband's daily occupations in the bright little court-yard were the result of a system. Yet both facts were true.
Meanwhile, below in the garden, her husband was meekly tying up his rose-trees. Neither of the landladies' husbands had figured in the street-battle. It had been a purely Amazonian encounter, bloodless but bitter. Both the husbands of these two belligerent landladies appeared singularly well trained. Mouchard, indeed, occupied a comparatively humble sphere in his wife's menage.
"How she lags! what an idiot of a child!" fumed Mere Mouchard as she peered down into the round blackness about which the curving staircase closed like an embrace. "One must have patience, it appears, with people made like that. Ah, tiens, here she comes. How could you keep ces dames waiting like this? It is shameful, shameful!" cried the woman, as she half shook the panting girl, in anger.
There was a glimpse of the village at its supper in low-raftered interiors a group of blouses and women in fishermen's rig were gathered about narrow tables, the coarse-featured faces and the seamed foreheads lit up by the feeble flame of candles that ended in long, thin lines of smoke. "Ohe Mere Mouchard! des voyageurs!" cried forth our coachman into the darkness.
If my Jehu kept faith there was no telling if he would do that or not, though I had to take the risk monsieur le mouchard would enjoy a nice drive, at the expense of his government! In five minutes I was at the café, where I dropped my coin; it rolled to a corner and the waiter picked it up, while I sipped my tea and grumbled at the scarcity of lemon.
And out of his tattered coat-tail he lugged a flask of powder and a lump of some cheap chemical salt, whose name I have, I am ashamed to say, forgotten. "You're a pretty fellow to keep such things in the same pocket with gunpowder!" "Come along to Mackaye's," said Crossthwaite. "I'll see to the bottom of this. Be hanged, but I think the fellow's a cursed mouchard some government spy!"
Not sooner go I from France, dan she ees marie to un grand, gros, fat epicier of La Villette Marie dat was fiancee au moi, gentilhomme! Mais, mon Dieu; when I was heard ze news, I was enrage I goes back to Paris. I fears notings no mouchard no gend'armerie no notings although, I was suspect and deporte de France!
You will stare when I tell you to fill up the blank with the name of her who is now become the first female personage in France? I turned round with astonishment; but the ambulating book-vender had vanished, in consequence, as I conclude, of being observed by some mouchard.
Word Of The Day