chapters that our candles were quite burnt
out. Then, after thanking her, I was stealthily returning to my room,
when a rough hand seized me, and a voice, it was Rivet's, whispered in
my ear: 'So you have not yet quite settled that affair of Morin's?'"

At seven o'clock the next morning, she herself brought me a cup of
chocolate. I have never drunk anything like it, soft, velvety,
perfumed, delicious. I could scarcely take my lips away from the cup,
and she had hardly left the room when Rivet came in. He seemed nervous
and irritable, like a man who had not slept, and he said to me crossly:
"If you go on like this, you will end by spoiling the affair of _that
pig of a Morin_!"

At eight o'clock the aunt arrived. Our discussion was very short, for
they withdrew their complaint, and I left five hundred francs for the
poor of the town. They wanted to keep us for the day, and they arranged
an excursion to go and see some ruins. Henriette made signs to me to
stay, behind her parents' back, and I accepted, but Rivet was determined
to go, and though I took him aside, and begged and prayed him to do this
for me, he appeared quite exasperated and kept saying to me: "I have had
enough of that pig Morin's affair, do you hear?"

Of course I was obliged to go also, and it was one of the hardest
moments of my life. I could have gone on arranging that business as long
as I lived, and when we were in the railway carriage, after shaking
hands with her in silence, I said to Rivet: "You are a mere brute!" And
he replied: "My dear fellow, you were beginning to excite me
confoundedly."

On getting to the _Fanal_ office, I saw a crowd waiting for us, and as
soon as they saw us they all exclaimed: "Well, have you settled the
affair of _that pig of a Morin_?" All La Rochelle was excited about it,
and Rivet, who had got over his ill-humor on the journey, had great
difficulty in keeping himself from laughing as he said: "Yes, we have
managed it, thanks to Labarbe." And we went to Morin's.

He was sitting in an easy chair, with mustard plasters on his legs, and
cold bandages on his head, nearly dead with misery. He was coughing with
the short cough of a dying man, without any one knowing how he had
caught it, and his wife looked at him like a tigress ready to eat him,
and as soon as he saw us he trembled so violently as to make his hands
and knees shake, so I said to him immediately: "It is all settled, you
dirty scamp, but don't do such a th