'Such food is not fit for a dog!' he cried. ''Twas an ill day for me when I came to _Le Pollet_! I had done better to drown myself.'
Marguerite stayed her fierce reply that she might slip the white stone between her lips; and as she held it beneath her tongue her anger suddenly melted. She thought now of Etienne's hunger and weariness, and was sorry that she had nought in the house for him to eat. And as he sat in moody silence she stole away, and begged some good broth from her godmother, who had always enough and to spare. This she placed before him beside the hearth, and smiled, and spoke in a gentle voice that made him turn to her with a start--it was just as if the Marguerite he loved had come back to him from the grave. Then he drew her to him, hiding his face in her dress; and for the first time since many a long day there was peace between them. Marguerite kept that white stone always, and when she was tempted to speak in anger it worked like a Fairy spell."
"And wasn't it one?" I asked, as _Nain Rouge_ put on his cap again, and a delicious smell of fried eggs and bacon came from the farmhouse kitchen on the breeze.
"Not it," said _Nain Rouge_, laughing heartily, "there were thousands like it on the beach, but you see it did just as well. For if once a woman can be induced to hold her tongue when she is angry, there'll be little trouble 'twixt man and wife. This has been so from all time."
"_Cock-a-doodle doo!_" cried the black cock, strutting grandly in front of us. _Nain Rouge_ darted after him, and I left them to themselves and went in to breakfast.
I did not see _Nain Rouge_ again, but I heard a great deal about him from Madame Daudet, the farmer's wife; she called him "the plague of her life." She said he hid her spectacles every time that she laid them down, and that it was quite impossible to make good butter, for he would play tricks with the cream. I think she was fond of him, all the same, for when I mentioned his name her jolly old face crinkled up into smiles, and she looked quite pleased and happy.
One day when Father had gone to the village to see some sick child whom the peasants believed to have been gazed at with "an evil eye," because it seemed unable to get well, Madame came to me as I stood prodding with a stick some fat black pigs who would not stir.