expeditions they sometimes made unlucky ones. Hang it, there'll always
be obstinate, miserly old fellows in the world! One of them, a farmer,
old Cochegrue, so mean he'd shave an egg, held out; he let them roast
his feet. Well, he died of it. The wife of Monsieur David, near Brives,
died of terror at merely seeing those fellows tie her husband's feet.
She died saying to David: 'Give them all you have.' He wouldn't, and so
she just pointed out the hiding-place. The _chauffeurs_ (that's why they
call them _chauffeurs_,--warmers) were the terror of the whole country
for over five years. But you must get it well into your head,--oh,
excuse me, madame, but you must know that more than one young man of
good family belonged to them, though somehow they were never the ones to
be caught."

Madame Graslin listened without interrupting or replying. There was
silence for a few moments, and then little Champion, jealous of the
right to amuse his mistress, wanted to tell her what he knew of the late
galley-slave.

"Madame ought to know more about Farrabesche; he hasn't his equal at
running, or at riding a horse. He can kill an ox with a blow of his
fist; nobody can shoot like him; he can carry seven hundred feet as
straight as a die,--there! One day they surprised him with three of his
comrades; two were wounded, one was killed,--good! Farrabesche was all
but taken. Bah! he just sprang on the horse of one of the gendarmes
behind the man, pricked the horse with his knife, made it run with all
its might, and so disappeared, holding the gendarme tight round the
body. But he held him so tight that after a time he threw the body on
the ground and rode away alone on the horse and master of the horse; and
he had the cheek to go and sell it not thirty miles from Limoges! After
that affair he hid himself for three months and was never seen. The
authorities offered a hundred golden louis to whoever would deliver him
up."

"Another time," added Colorat, "when the prefect of Tulle offered a
hundred louis for him, he made one of his own cousins, Giriex of Vizay,
earn them. His cousin denounced him, and appeared to deliver him up.
Oh, yes, he delivered him sure enough! The gendarmes were delighted, and
took him to Tulle; there they put him in the prison of Lubersac, from
which he escaped that very night, profiting by a hole already begun by
one of his accomplices who had been executed. All these adventures gave
Farrabesche a fine reputation. T