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Fourchon fell into a sort of reverie; Tonsard profited by his inattention to take back the trap, and as he took it up he cut a slip below the coin in his father-in-law's pocket at the moment when the old man raised his glass to his lips; then he set his foot on the five-franc piece as it dropped on the earthen floor just where it was always kept damp by the heel-taps which the customers flung from their glasses.
No one interrupted Pere Fourchon, who seemed to owe his eloquence to his potations. At first Sibilet tried to cut him short, but desisted at a sign from Blondet. The abbe, the general, and the countess, all understood from the expression of the writer's eye that he wanted to study the question of pauperism from life, and perhaps take his revenge on Pere Fourchon.
"Yes," replied Brunet, "we must do without Pere Fourchon and take the assistant at Conches. Go on before me; I have a paper to carry to the chateau. Rigou has gained his second suit, and I've got to deliver the verdict."
"That little woman," cried Madame Soudry, "is too much of a Parisian not to know how to run with the hare and hold with the hounds." "Fourchon has got his granddaughter Catherine on good terms, he tells me, with Charles, the Shopman's groom. That gives us one ear more in Les Aigues Are you sure of the Abbe Taupin," he added, as the priest entered the room from the terrace.
"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!
"Here's a refractory, Monsieur Brunet; Pere Fourchon wants to drop off." "He has had too many drops already," said the sheriff; "but the law in this case does not require that he shall be sober." "Please excuse me, Monsieur Brunet," said Fourchon, "I am expected at Les Aigues on business; they are in treaty for an otter."
No longer able to serve the State, Pere Fourchon ended by becoming a manufacturer. In the country a poor man can always get something to do, and make at least a pretence of gaining an honest livelihood. At sixty-eight years of age the old man started his rope-walk, a manufactory which requires the very smallest capital.
Blondet stood where he was told without remarking the lapse of time, for every now and then the old fellow made him a sign as much as to say that all was going well; and besides, nothing makes time go so fast as the expectation that quick action is to succeed the perfect stillness of watching. "Pere Fourchon," whispered the boy, finding himself alone with the old man, "there's really an otter!"
Thrashed by her when drunk, he allowed her to thrash him still when sober; which caused Pere Fourchon to say, with a sniff at Vermichel's clothes, "It is the livery of a slave." "Talk of the sun and you'll see its beams," cried Fourchon, repeating a well-worn allusion to the rutilant face of Vermichel, which really did resemble those copper suns painted on tavern signs in the provinces.
"Ran tan plan! masters indeed!" shouted old Fourchon. "I say, my lad," he added to Nicolas, "after your performance this morning it's not my clarionet that you'll get between your thumb and four fingers!" "Don't plague him, or he'll make you throw up your wine by a punch in the stomach," said Catherine, roughly. Strategically, Rigou's position at Blangy was that of a picket sentinel.
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