to my poor father," she said to her husband, "and
yet he has earned a deal of money this year; God grant he came by
it honestly. Let me see that," she added, springing at the coin and
snatching it from Fourchon's fingers.

"Marie," said Tonsard, gravely, "above the board you'll find some
bottled wine. Go and get a bottle."

Wine is of only one quality in the country, but it is sold as of two
kinds,--cask wine and bottled wine.

"Where did you get this, papa" demanded La Tonsard, slipping the coin
into her pocket.

"Philippine! you'll come to a bad end," said the old man, shaking his
head but not attempting to recover his money. Doubtless he had long
realized the futility of a struggle between his daughter, his terrible
son-in-law, and himself.

"Another bottle of wine for which you get five francs out of me," he
added, in a peevish tone. "But it shall be the last. I shall give my
custom to the Cafe de la Paix."

"Hold your tongue, papa!" remarked his fair and fat daughter, who bore
some resemblance to a Roman matron. "You need a shirt, and a pair of
clean trousers, and a hat; and I want to see you with a waistcoat.
That's what I take the money for."

"I have told you again and again that such things would ruin me," said
the old man. "People would think me rich and stop giving me anything."

The bottle brought by Marie put an end to the loquacity of the old man,
who was not without that trait, characteristic of those whose tongues
are ready to tell out everything, and who shrink from no expression of
their thought, no matter how atrocious it may be.

"Then you don't want to tell where you filched that money?" said
Tonsard. "We might go and get more where that came from,--the rest of
us."

He was making a snare, and as he finished it the ferocious innkeeper
happened to glance at his father-in-law's trousers, and there he spied a
raised round spot which clearly defined a second five-franc piece.

"Having become a capitalist I drink your health," said Pere Fourchon.

"If you choose to be a capitalist you can be," said Tonsard; "you have
the means, you have! But the devil has bored a hole in the back of your
head through which everything runs out."

"Hey! I only played the otter trick on that young fellow they have got
at Les Aigues. He's from Paris. That's all there is to it."

"If crowds of people would come to see the sources of the Avonne, you'd
be rich, Grandpa Fourchon," said Marie.

"Yes," he said,