“Well, thank you, Pere Fourchon; here’s forty sous to drink my health in case I can’t get you the sherry.”
Pere Fourchon turned his head aside as he pocketed the money lest Charles should see the expression of amusement and sarcasm which he was unable to repress.
“Catherine,” he resumed, “is a proud minx; she likes sherry. You had better tell her to go and get it at Les Aigues.”
Charles looked at Pere Fourchon with naive admiration, not suspecting the eager interest the general’s enemies took in slipping one more spy into the chateau.
“The general ought to feel happy now,” continued Fourchon; “the peasants are all quiet. What does he say? Is he satisfied with Sibilet?”
“It is only Monsieur Michaud who finds fault with Sibilet. They say he’ll get him sent away.”
“Professional jealousy!” exclaimed Fourchon. “I’ll bet you would like to get rid of Francois and take his place.”
“Hang it! he has twelve hundred francs wages,” said Charles; “but they can’t send him off,--he knows the general’s secrets.”
“Just as Madame Michaud knows the countess’s,” remarked Fourchon, watching the other carefully. “Look here, my boy, do you know whether Monsieur and Madame have separate rooms?”
“Of course; if they didn’t, Monsieur wouldn’t be so fond of Madame.”
As they were now before the kitchen windows nothing more was said.
While breakfast was in progress at the chateau, Francois, the head footman, whispered to Blondet, but loud enough for the general to overhear him,--
“Monsieur, Pere Fourchon’s boy is here; he says they have caught the otter, and wants to know if you would like it, or whether they shall take it to the sub-prefect at Ville-aux-Fayes.”
Emile Blondet, though himself a past-master of hoaxing, could not keep his cheeks from blushing like those of a virgin who hears an indecorous story of which she knows the meaning.
“Ha! ha! so you have hunted the otter this morning with Pere Fourchon?” cried the general, with a roar of laughter.
“What is it?” asked the countess, uneasy at her husband’s laugh.
“When a man of wit and intelligence is taken in by old Fourchon,” continued the general, “a retired cuirassier need not blush for having hunted that otter; which bears an enormous resemblance to the third posthorse we are made to pay for and never see.” With that he went off into further explosions of laughter, in the midst of which he contrived to say: “I am not surprised you had to change your boots--and your trousers; I have no doubt you have been wading! The joke didn’t go as far as that with me,--I stayed on the bank; but then, you know, you are so much more intelligent than I--”