While we were consoling the poor woman, Monsieur de Witcheritche, who was not the man to abandon his sausage and his pork, kept on in pursuit of the dogs, at which he threw all the stones he could find on the road. He had already wounded one and compelled it to slacken its pace. Hoping to hit the other, which was just passing the barrier, he threw a great stone at it with all his force. But the stone was ill-aimed, and, instead of striking the dog, struck the customs clerk in the eye, as he was looking up at the sky to see if the storm were passing away.
His comrades ran to him. One of the dogs, which was then passing the city limits, ran among the clerks' legs and made them stagger. The second dog, trying to escape, was seized by monsieur le baron, who thought of nothing but his dinner and pursued his course, unmindful of anything else. He succeeded in catching the dog by the tail, and a battle ensued between him and the animal, which refused to give up the sausage. The soldiers from the neighboring post ran up in response to the outcries of the clerks. The vehicles of all kinds passing in or out were compelled to stop; the soldiers would allow no one to pass until they had found out what the matter was. A crowd gathered to see what was going on, and everyone put forward some conjecture.
"It's an important prisoner whom they arrested just as he was leaving the city," said one, "and it seems that he wounded the clerk who seized him."
"No; they've just discovered some contraband goods in one of those wagons; it was being smuggled in."
Amid the tumult, which was augmented by the barking of the dogs, the baron shouted triumphantly:
"I haf him! I haf him!" and he waved aloft the bologna sausage, which he had snatched from his enemy's jaws; then, before the poor devil whose eye he had put out had recovered consciousness, Monsieur de Witcheritche slipped into the crowd and returned to his wife, leaving the clerks, soldiers, and bystanders asking one another what it was all about. Madame la baronne had recovered her husband, Vauvert was in a condition to walk unaided, and Raymond began to play the dandy. I left the company and took a cab to return to Paris.
A LITTLE DISSERTATION IN WHICH THERE IS NOTHING ENTERTAINING