ill turn
to Antoine. Geoffroi Le Cocq seemed never far off, wherever Antoine
might be. He would lounge in the doorway of the cafe, watching for him,
and sing a mocking song as he passed down the road. He would mimic his
sayings among the other lads, who were not, however, very ready to join
in deriding him. And once he contrived to poison the Kaudrens' bait,
just when weather and season were at their best for fishing, so that
Antoine brought not a single fish home. Jean, with the quick-blazing
anger of his race, declared that if he could find the man who had done
it, he would "break his skull." But Antoine, though he knew well enough
who had done it, held his peace. Geoffroi was quicker of speech than
Antoine, and on the Sunday, when the whole village trooped out of the
little chapel after mass, and streamed down the winding village road,
the women in their white coiffes and black shawls, and the men in their
round Breton hats with buckles and streaming ribbons, while knots began
to collect about the doors of the village cafes, and laughter, gossip
and the sound of the fiddle arose on the sunny air, Geoffroi would
gather a circle round him to hear his quips and odd stories, and to join
in the fun that he would mercilessly make of others less quick than
himself at repartee. It was extraordinary on these occasions how
Geoffroi, like a spider in his web on the watch for a fly, would
contrive to draw Antoine into his circle, sometimes as though it were
merely to show off his cleverness before him, at other times adroitly
lighting on some quaint habit or saying of Antoine's, holding it up to
ridicule, now in one light, now in another, with a versatility that
would have made his fortune as a comedian, and returning to the charge
again and again, in the hope, as it seemed, of provoking Antoine's
seldom-stirred anger: but in this entirely failing, for Antoine would
generally join heartily in the laugh himself. Only once did a convulsion
of anger seize him, and he strode forward in the throng and gave
Geoffroi the lie to his face, when the latter had said that Marie
Pierres kissed him in the Valley of Dwarfs, the evening before. He knew
that Geoffroi only said it to spite him; for Marie--the daughter of
Jean's partner--was his fiancee, and was as true as gold: but the image
the words called up convulsed his brain; a blind impulse sprang up
within him to strike and crush that beautiful face of Geoffroi's. He
clenched his fist and