“Magloire! dear Magloire!” she said, “is it really you? Oh! how glad I am to see you again after the bad dream I have had!”
“Well!” muttered Thibault, “she is a brazen-faced huzzy, if you like! if I do not get all that I want from the ladies I run after, they, at least, afford me some valuable object lessons by the way!”
“Alas! my beautiful Suzanne,” said the Bailiff, “it is no bad dream you have had, but, as it seems, a hideous reality.”
“Ah! I remember now,” responded Madame Magloire. Then, as if noticing for the first time that the lord of Vez was there:
“Ah! my lord,” she continued, “I hope you have repeated nothing to my husband of all those foolish things I told you?”
“And why not, dear lady?” asked the Baron.
“Because an honest woman knows how to protect herself, and has no need to keep on telling her husband a lot of nonsense like that.”
“On the contrary, Madame,” replied the Baron, “I have told my friend everything.”
“Do you mean that you have told him that during the whole of supper time that man was fondling my knee under the table?”
“I told him that, certainly.”
“Oh! the wretch!” exclaimed the Bailiff.
“And that when I stooped to pick up my table napkin, it was not that, but his hand, that I came across.”
“I have hidden nothing from my friend Magloire.”
“Oh! the ruffian!” cried the Bailiff.
“And that Monsieur Magloire having a passing giddiness which made him shut his eyes while at table, his guest took the opportunity to kiss me against my will?”
“I thought it was right for a husband to know everything.”
“Oh! the knave!” cried the Bailiff.
“And did you even go so far as to tell him that having come into my room, and the wind having blown out the candle, I fancied I saw the window curtains move, which made me call to you for help, believing that he was hidden behind them?”
“No, I did not tell him that! I was going to when you sneezed.”
“Oh! the vile rascal!” roared the Bailiff, taking hold of the Baron’s sword which the latter had laid on a chair, and drawing it out of the scabbard, then, running toward the window which his wife had indicated, “He had better not be behind these curtains, or I will spit him like a woodcock,” and with this he gave one or two lunges with the sword against the window hangings.
But all at once the Bailiff stayed his hand, and stood as if arrested like a school-boy caught trespassing out of bounds; his hair rose on end beneath his cotton night-cap, and this conjugal head-dress became agitated as by some convulsive movement. The sword dropped from his trembling hand, and fell with a clatter on the floor. He had caught sight of Thibault behind the curtains, and as Hamlet kills Polonius, thinking to slay his father’s murderer, so he, believing that he was thrusting at nothing, had nearly killed his crony of the night before, who had already had time enough to prove himself a false friend. Moreover as he had lifted the curtain with the point of the sword, the Bailiff was not the only one who had seen Thibault. His wife and the Lord of Vez had both been participators in the unexpected vision, and both uttered a cry of surprise. In telling their tale so well, they had had no idea that they were so near the truth. The Baron, too, had not only seen that there was a man, but had also recognised that the man was Thibault.
“Damn me!” he exclaimed, as he went nearer to him, “if I mistake not, this is my old acquaintance, the man with the boar-spear!”
“How! how! man with the boar-spear?” asked the Bailiff, his teeth chattering as he spoke. “Anyway I trust he has not his boar-spear with him now!” And he ran behind his wife for protection.
“No, no, do not be alarmed,” said the Lord of Vez, “even if he has got it with him, I promise you it shall not stay long in his hands. So, master poacher,” he went on, addressing himself to Thibault, “you are not content to hunt the game belonging to his Highness the Duke of Orleans, in the forest of Villers-Cotterets, but you must come and make excursions in the open and poach on the territory of my friend Maître Magloire?”
“A poacher! do you say?” exclaimed the Bailiff. “Is not Monsieur Thibault a landowner, the proprietor of farms, living in his country house on the income from his estate of a hundred acres?”
“What, he?” said the Baron, bursting into a loud guffaw, “so he made you believe all that stuff, did he? the rascal has got a clever tongue. He! a landowner! that poor starveling! why, the only property he possesses is what my stable-boys wear on their feet—the wooden shoes he gets his living by making.”
Madame Suzanne, on hearing Thibault thus classified, made a gesture of scorn and contempt, while Maître Magloire drew back a step, while the colour mounted to his face. Not that the good little man was proud, but he hated all kinds of deceit; it was not because he had clinked glasses with a shoe-maker that he turned red, but because he had drunk in company with a liar and a traitor.
During this avalanche of abuse Thibault had stood immovable with his arms folded and a smile on his lips. He had no fear but that when his turn came to speak, he would be able to take an easy revenge. And the moment to speak seemed now to have come. In a light, bantering tone of voice—which showed that he was gradually accustoming himself to conversing with people of a superior rank to his own—he then exclaimed; “By the Devil and his horns! as you yourself remarked a little while ago, you can tell tales of other people, my lord, without much compunction, and I fancy if everyone followed your example, I should not be at such a loss what to say, as I choose to appear!”
The lord of Vez, perfectly aware, as was the bailiff’s wife, of the menace conveyed in these words, answered by looking Thibault up and down with eyes that were starting with anger.
“Oh!” said Madame Magloire, somewhat imprudently, “you will see, he is going to invent some scandalous tale about me.”
“Have no fear, Madame,” replied Thibault, who had quite recovered his self-possession, “you have left me nothing to invent on that score.”
“Oh! the vile wretch!” she cried, “you see, I was right; he has got some malicious slander to report about me; he is determined to revenge himself because I would not return his sheep’s-eyes, to punish me because I was not willing to warn my husband that he was paying court to me.” During this speech of Madame Suzanne’s the lord of Vez had picked up his sword and advanced threateningly towards Thibault. But the Bailiff threw himself between them, and held back the Baron’s arm. It was fortunate for Thibault that he did so, for the latter did not move an inch to avoid the blow, evidently prepared at the last moment to utter some terrible wish which would avert the danger from him; but the Bailiff interposing, Thibault had no need to resort to this means of help.
“Gently, my lord!” said the Maître Magloire, “this man is not worthy our anger. I am but a plain citizen myself, but you see, I have only contempt for what he says, and I readily forgive him the way in which he has endeavoured to abuse my hospitality.”
Madame Magloire now thought that her moment had come for moistening the situation of affairs with her
