le,--they have actually come to cutting down
six-year-old trees. The loss to you, Monsieur le comte, amounts to fully
twenty-odd thousand francs a year."

"Do you hear that, madame?" said the general to his wife.

"Is it not exaggerated?" asked Madame de Montcornet.

"No, madame, unfortunately not," said the abbe. "Poor Niseron, that old
fellow with the white head, who combines the functions of bell-ringer,
beadle, grave-digger, sexton, and clerk, in defiance of his republican
opinions,--I mean the grandfather of the little Genevieve whom you
placed with Madame Michaud--"

"La Pechina," said Sibilet, interrupting the abbe.

"Pechina!" said the countess, "whom do you mean?"

"Madame la comtesse, when you met little Genevieve on the road in a
miserable condition, you cried out in Italian, 'Piccina!' The word
became a nickname, and is now corrupted all through the district into
Pechina," said the abbe. "The poor girl comes to church with Madame
Michaud and Madame Sibilet."

"And she is none the better for it," said Sibilet, "for the others
ill-treat her on account of her religion."

"Well, that poor old man of seventy gleans, honestly, about a bushel
and a half a day," continued the priest; "but his natural uprightness
prevents him from selling his gleanings as others do,--he keeps them for
his own consumption. Monsieur Langlume, your miller, grinds his flour
gratis at my request, and my servant bakes his bread with mine."

"I had quite forgotten my little protegee," said the countess, troubled
at Sibilet's remark. "Your arrival," she added to Blondet, "has quite
turned my head. But after breakfast I will take you to the gate of the
Avonne and show you the living image of those women whom the painters of
the fifteenth century delighted to perpetuate."

The sound of Pere Fourchon's broken sabots was now heard; after
depositing them in the antechamber, he was brought to the door of the
dining-room by Francois. At a sign from the countess, Francois allowed
him to pass in, followed by Mouche with his mouth full and carrying the
otter, hanging by a string tied to its yellow paws, webbed like those of
a palmiped. He cast upon his four superiors sitting at table, and also
upon Sibilet, that look of mingled distrust and servility which serves
as a veil to the thoughts of the peasantry; then he brandished his
amphibian with a triumphant air.

"Here it is!" he cried, addressing Blondet.

"My otter!" returned the Parisi