own facetious,
and the officer continued:

"Where is your butter?"

"My butter?"

"Yes, your butter."

"In the jar."

"Then where is the butter jar?"

"Here it is."

She brought out an old cup, at the bottom of which there was a layer of
rancid, salt butter, and the brigadier smelt it, and said, with a shake
of his head:

"It is not the same. I want the butter that smells of the rabbit. Come,
Lenient, open your eyes; look under the sideboard, my good fellow, and I
will look under the bed."

Having shut the door, he went up to the bed and tried to move it; but it
was fixed to the wall, and had not been moved for more than half a
century, apparently. Then the brigadier stooped, and made his uniform
crack. A button had flown off.

"Lenient," he said.

"Yes, brigadier?"

"Come here my lad and look under the bed; I am too tall. I will look
after the sideboard."

He got up and waited while his man executed his orders.

Lenient, who was short and stout, took off his kepi, laid himself on his
stomach, and putting his face on the floor looked at the black cavity
under the bed, and then, suddenly, he exclaimed:

"All right, here we are!"

"What have you got? The rabbit?"

"No, the thief."

"The thief! Pull him out, pull him out!"

The gendarme had put his arms under the bed and laid hold of something,
and he was pulling with all his might, and at last a foot, shod in a
thick boot, appeared, which he was holding in his right hand. The
brigadier took it, crying:

"Pull! pull!"

And Lenient, who was on his knees by that time, was pulling at the other
leg. But it was a hard job, for the prisoner kicked out hard, and arched
up his back across the bed.

"Courage! courage! pull! pull!" Senateur cried, and they pulled him with
all their strength so that the wooden bar gave way, and he came out as
far as his head; but at last they got that out also, and they saw the
terrified and furious face of Polyte, whose arms remained stretched out
under the bed.

"Pull away!" the brigadier kept on exclaiming. Then they heard a strange
noise, and as the arms followed the shoulders, and the hands the arms,
and, in the hands the handle of a saucepan, and at the end of the handle
the saucepan itself, which contained stewed rabbit.

"Good Lord! good Lord!" the brigadier shouted in his delight, while
Lenient took charge of the man; and the rabbit's skin, an overwhelming
proof, was discovered under the mattress, and then