an, "and well paid for."

"Oh, my dear gentleman," replied Pere Fourchon, "yours got away; she is
now in her burrow, and she won't come out, for she's a female,--this
is a male; Mouche saw him coming just as you went away. As true as
you live, as true as that Monsieur le comte covered himself and his
cuirassiers with glory at Waterloo, the otter is mine, just as much as
Les Aigues belongs to Monseigneur the general. But the otter is _yours_
for twenty francs; if not I'll take it to the sub-prefect. If Monsieur
Gourdon thinks it too dear, then I'll give you the preference; that's
only fair, as we hunted together this morning!"

"Twenty francs!" said Blondet. "In good French you can't call that
_giving_ the preference."

"Hey, my dear gentleman," cried the old fellow. "Perhaps I don't know
French, and I'll ask it in good Burgundian; as long as I get the money,
I don't care, I'll talk Latin: 'latinus, latina, latinum'! Besides,
twenty francs is what you promised me this morning. My children
have already stolen the silver you gave me; I wept about it, coming
along,--ask Charles if I didn't. Not that I'd arrest 'em for the value
of ten francs and have 'em up before the judge, no! But just as soon as
I earn a few pennies, they make me drink and get 'em out of me. Ah! it
is hard, hard to be reduced to go and get my wine elsewhere. But just
see what children are these days! That's what we got by the Revolution;
it is all for the children now-a-days, and parents are suppressed.
I'm bringing up Mouche on another tack; he loves me, the little
scamp,"--giving his grandson a poke.

"It seems to me you are making him a little thief, like all the rest,"
said Sibilet; "he never lies down at night without some sin on his
conscience."

"Ha! Monsieur Sibilet, his conscience is as clean as yours any day! Poor
child! what can he steal? A little grass! that's better than throttling
a man! He don't know mathematics like you, nor subtraction, nor
addition, nor multiplication,--you are very unjust to us, that you
are! You call us a nest of brigands, but you are the cause of the
misunderstandings between our good landlord here, who is a worthy man,
and the rest of us, who are all worthy men,--there ain't an honester
part of the country than this. Come, what do you mean? do I own
property? don't I go half-naked, and Mouche too? Fine sheets we slept
in, washed by the dew every morning! and unless you want the air we
breathe and the sunshine