ething will
have to be done."

"You are always for maintaining the right, my dear Michaud, and 'summum
jus, summum injuria.' If you are not more tolerant, you will get into
trouble, so Sibilet here tells me. I wish you could have heard Pere
Fourchon just now; the wine he had been drinking made him speak out."

"He frightened me," said the countess.

"He said nothing I did not know long ago," replied the general.

"Oh! the rascal wasn't drunk; he was playing a part; for whose benefit
I leave you to guess. Perhaps you know?" returned Michaud, fixing an eye
on Sibilet which caused the latter to turn red.

"O rus!" cried Blondet, with another look at the abbe.

"But these poor creatures suffer," said the countess, "and there is a
great deal of truth in what old Fourchon has just screamed at us,--for I
cannot call it speaking."

"Madame," replied Michaud, "do you suppose that for fourteen years the
soldiers of the Emperor slept on a bed of roses? My general is a count,
he is a grand officer of the Legion of honor, he has had perquisites and
endowments given to him; am I jealous of him, I who fought as he did? Do
I wish to cheat him of his glory, to steal his perquisites, to deny him
the honor due to his rank? The peasant should obey as the soldier
obeys; he should feel the loyalty of a soldier, his respect for acquired
rights, and strive to become an officer himself, honorably, by labor and
not by theft. The sabre and the plough are twins; though the soldier has
something more than the peasant,--he has death hanging over him at any
minute."

"I want to say that from the pulpit," cried the abbe.

"Tolerant!" continued the keeper, replying to the general's remark about
Sibilet, "I would tolerate a loss of ten per cent upon the gross returns
of Les Aigues; but as things are now thirty per cent is what you lose,
general; and, if Monsieur Sibilet's accounts show it, I don't understand
his tolerance, for he benevolently gives up a thousand or twelve hundred
francs a year."

"My dear Monsieur Michaud," replied Sibilet, in a snappish tone, "I have
told Monsieur le comte that I would rather lose twelve hundred francs
a year than my life. Think of it seriously; I have warned you often
enough."

"Life!" exclaimed the countess; "you can't mean that anybody's life is
in danger?"

"Don't let us argue about state affairs here," said the general,
laughing. "All this, my dear, merely means that Sibilet, in his capacity
of fin