d,
I'd give myself a few wounds and go to bed and say I was ill, and have
that Shopman and his keeper up before the assizes and get twenty crowns
damages. Monsieur Sarcus would give them."

"In any case the Shopman would give them to stop the talk it would
make," said Godain.

Vaudoyer, the former field-keeper, a man five feet six inches tall, with
a face pitted with the small-pox and furrowed like a nut-cracker, kept
silence with a hesitating air.

"Well, you old ninny, does that ruffle you?" asked Tonsard, attracted
by the idea of damages. "If they had broken twenty crowns' worth of my
mother's bones we could turn it into good account; we might make a fine
fuss for three hundred francs; Monsieur Gourdon would go to Les Aigues
and tell them that the mother had got a broken hip--"

"And break it, too," interrupted Madame Tonsard; "they do that in
Paris."

"It would cost too much," remarked Godain.

"I have been too long among the people who rule us to believe that
matters will go as you want them," said Vaudoyer at last, remembering
his past official intercourse with the courts and the gendarmerie. "If
it were at Soulanges, now, it might be done; Monsieur Soudry represents
the government there, and he doesn't wish well to the Shopman; but if
you attack the Shopman and Vatel they'll defend themselves viciously;
they'll say, 'The woman was to blame; she had a tree, otherwise she
would have let her bundle be examined on the highroad; she wouldn't have
run away; if an accident happened to her it was through her own fault.'
No, you can't trust to that plan."

"The Shopman didn't resist when I sued him," said Courtecuisse; "he paid
me at once."

"I'll go to Soulanges, if you like," said Bonnebault, "and consult
Monsieur Gourdon, the clerk of the court, and you shall know to-night if
_there's money in it_."

"You are only making an excuse to be after that big goose of a girl,
Socquard's daughter," said Marie Tonsard, giving Bonnebault a slap on
the shoulder that made his lungs hum.

Just then a verse of an old Burgundian Christmas carol was heard:--

"One fine moment of his life
Was at the wedding feast;
He changed the water into wine,--
Madeira of the best."

Every one recognized the vinous voice of old Fourchon, to whom the verse
must have been peculiarly agreeable; Mouche accompanied in his treble
tones.

"Ha! they're full!" cried old Mother Tonsard to her daughter-in-law;
"your father is as red