“Faith, yes, my boy, he’s there right enough,” said he, “and I can as good as see him at this moment.”

  “Ah, you’ll see him better still when we have settled his score.”

  “You make my mouth water. I’ve a good mind to go for a stroll in that direction.”

  “Oh, I’m easy enough in my mind, you’ll find everything as I said. As for him he has his den in the great thicket of the Têtes de Salmon. Do not put yourself about for the gentleman; go as close as you like, my gentleman will not budge. His wife is ill and my gentleman is a gentleman.”

  “Well, I will go,” said old Guillaume with a gesture of resolution, which made him close his teeth tight and shortened the cutty-stem (already short enough) by above an inch more.

  “Do you want Louchonneau?”

  “Why, what for!”

  “Well that’s true enough. You have eyes; you will look and see; you will seek, and you will find.... As for Master Mathieu’s namesake, he shall be put into his kennel after he has had a good slice of bread, for he worked to-day like an angel.”

  “Ah, Mathieu,” said old Guillaume, looking sadly at the vagabond who was quietly eating his potatoes at the fireside, “do you hear that? He will tell me what oak a squirrel has climbed, and when a weasel has crossed the road. That’s what you’ll never know.”

  “Moreover it’s what I don’t care about knowing or not knowing. What the devil would you have me make of that?”

  Guillaume shrugged his shoulders at this heedlessness of Mathieu’s, unintelligible to an old keeper; then he put on his shooting coat, buckled his half-gaiters, took his gun through force of habit and because he would not have known what to do with his right arm if he had not had his gun, gave a friendly handshake to François and set off.

  As for this latter, faithful to the promise he had just made to Louchonneau, though keeping old Guillaume in his eye as he followed the Têtes de Salmon road, he went to the cupboard, opened it and cut a hunk of black bread of about half a pound, murmuring:

  “Oh, the old bloodhound? While I was making my report, his feet were itching. Come, Louchonneau, my friend, have a nice crust! Now that you have worked so well, off with you to your kennel; and sharp’s the word, my lad!”

  Then, going out by the bakehouse door, against the exterior walls of which Master Louchonneau’s kennel was fixed, he disappeared, followed by this latter — who felt that the crust of bread mitigated the necessity of the return to the kennel — and leaving Mathieu Goguelue alone with his potatoes.

  CHAPTER IV.

  A BIRD OF ILL OMEN.

  HARDLY had François got out of his sight when Mathieu raised his head and an expression of intelligence which one would have thought his heavy physiognomy incapable of passed like a flash of lightning over his face.

  Then he listened to the noise of the steps of the young keeper who was departing, the sound of his voice which was getting fainter, and on tip-toe he moved towards the brandy bottle, watching (thanks to his squint eyes) on one side the door through which old Guillaume had gone out, on the other that through which François had just disappeared.

  Then raising the bottle and putting it in the ray of daylight which crossed the house like a golden arrow, in order to see how much liquor had been taken out and consequently how much he might absorb without getting into trouble: “Ah! the old curmudgeon,” he exclaimed. “To think he didn’t offer me any! “And in order to repair the omission of Père Guillaume, Mathieu put the neck of the bottle to his lips and swallowed rapidly three or four mouthfuls of the fiery beverage, as if it had been the most harmless liquid, and that without uttering either the hum of Father Guillaume or the houch of François.

  Then as the steps of the latter drew near the room, the vagabond went with the same soft step and resumed his seat on the stool in the chimney-nook, beginning to sing with an air of innocence which would have deceived François himself, a song of which the regiment of the Queen’s Dragoons who had long been in barracks in the Castle of Villers-Cotterets had left the tradition in the town.

  Mathieu had reached the second verse of his song when François reappeared on the threshold of the bakehouse. Doubtless in order to show of how little interest the presence or the absence of François was to him, Mathieu Goguelue was going on with the interminable ditty, and was about to attack the second couplet, but François, stopping in front of him, said: “Halloa! you’re singing now, are you?”

  “Is singing forbidden?” asked Mathieu. “In that case the Maire should proclaim the fact by sound of trumpet, and there will be no more singing.”

  “No,” answered François, “it’s not forbidden, but it will bring me ill luck!”

  “Why so?”

  “Because when the first bird I hear singing in the morning is a screech-owl, I say to myself, ‘bad luck.’”

  “That is to say I’m a screech-owl. All right. I’m a screech-owl, am I? Well, well, I’ll be anything anybody likes.”

  And bringing his two hands close together after taking the indispensable precaution of spitting into them, Mathieu Goguelue uttered a cry which imitated to perfection the sad monotonous cry of the bird of night. François himself shuddered. “Will you hold your noise, you bird of ill omen!” he said.

  “Hold my peace?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I have something to sing to you, what would you say?”

  “I should say I have not the time to listen to you.... Look here! do me a service instead, will you?”

  “Do you a service?”

  “Yes, me. Do you think you cannot do anybody a good turn?”

  “Oh, yes.... What do you want?”

  “I want you to hold my gun in front of the fire to dry while I change my gaiters.”

  “Change your gaiters! So Monsieur François is afraid of catching cold.”

  “I’m not afraid of catching cold, but I am going to put on my regulation gaiters, for the inspector might come to the hunt and I want him to find me with my full kit.... Well! You don’t like the idea of drying my gun.”

  “Neither yours nor anybody else’s.... May my head be crushed between two stones, like a stinking beast’s, if from to-day onward to the day when I shall be shoved into the ground, I ever touch a gun.”

  “Well, that would not be much loss, seeing how you use it,” said François, opening a sort of cupboard which contained a collection of all kinds of gaiters and looking for his leggings amongst those of the Watrin family.

  Mathieu followed him with his left eye, while his right eye seemed to be exclusively occupied with his last potato, which he was peeling slowly and clumsily; then he grumbled as he followed him with his eye, “Well, and why should I use it better when I use it for other people? Just let the chance offer for using it for my own benefit, and you’ll see I’m no more awkward-handed than yourself!”

  “And what will you put your hand to if not to a gun?” asked François, with his foot on a chair and beginning to buckle his long gaiters on. “I’ll put my hand to my wages! Monsieur Watrin had proposed to get me appointed as under-keeper; but as one has to serve His Highness a year, two years, and sometimes three years all for nothing — no, thank you. I’m not on for that job. I much prefer to be manservant at the Maire’s.”

  “What! servant at the Maire’s! Servant in the house of M. Raisin, the wood-merchant?”

  “Yes, just so; in the house of M. Raisin, the Maire, the wood-merchant.”

  “Oh,” said François, buckling his gaiters and with a shrug of his shoulders which showed the contempt he felt for a domestic.

  “Are you annoyed?”

  “Not I,” answered François, “it’s all one to me! All I want to know is what’s to become of old Pierre in all this business.”

  “Ecod!” said Mathieu, carelessly. “It seems that he is going to leave.”

  “Going to leave!” replied François, with a touch of interest concerning the old servant they were talking of.

  “Of course, since I am taking his place, he must be going,” continued Mathieu.

  “But it’s impossible,” rejoined François, “he has been in the Raisin’s house for the last twenty years!”

  “All the more reason for another having a look in,” said Mathieu with his evil smile.

  “Look here, you are a bad fellow, Louchonneau,” cried François.

  “To begin with,” answered Mathieu, with that stolid air he knew so well how to put on, “my name is not Louchonneau; that is the name of the dog you have just taken to his kennel; it is not mine.”

  “Yes, you are right,” said François; “and when he learned that sometimes you were called by the same name, he objected, poor dog, saying that he, the bloodhound of old Watrin, would never dream of trying to get the berth of Monsieur Deviolaine’s bloodhound, though of course a Chief Inspector’s house is more desirable than a mere head-keeper’s, and since he lodged his complaint you may squint as much as you like, but you are no longer Louchonneau.”

  “Just think of that! So I am a bad lot in your opinion, eh, François?”

  “Yes, in my opinion, and in everybody else’s.”

  “Why?”

  “Are you not ashamed to take the bread out of the mouth of a poor old chap like Pierre? He’ll be obliged to beg his wife and children’s bread.”

  “Well, you can make him an allowance out of the 500 francs that you get from the administration as deputy-keeper.”

  “I shall not make him an allowance,” answered François, “because with these 500 francs I support my mother, and she comes first. But he will always find at our house, when he chooses to come, a plate of onion soup and a bit of rabbit stew — the keeper’s usual dinner. A servant in the Maire’s house!” continued François, who had finished fastening on his second gaiter; “how like you to turn servant!”

  “Oh, livery for livery,” said Mathieu, “I prefer the one which has money in the waistcoat pocket to one which has empty pockets.”

  “One moment, my friend,” cried François, then correcting himself — ” No, you are not my friend — our dress is a uniform, not a livery.”

  “An oak-leaf embroidered on the collar is not much different from a stripe sewn on to the sleeve,” said Mathieu with a jerk of his head which established by gesture at the same time as his words the slightness of the distinction he made between them.

  “Yes,” continued François, who did not want his interlocutor to have the last word; “only when one has the oak-leaf on one’s collar one works, whereas with the stripe on the sleeve one does nothing.... That’s what made you prefer the stripe to the oak-leaf, isn’t it, lazybones?”

  “It’s like enough,” answered Mathieu. Then passing suddenly from one idea to another, as if that idea had suddenly presented itself to his mind: “Talking of that, I hear that Catherine is coming back from Paris to-day.”

  “Who’s Catherine?” asked François. “Catherine — oh, she’s just Catherine, old Guillaume’s niece, and Monsieur Bernard’s cousin, who has finished her apprenticeship as a seamstress and milliner in Paris, and who is going to take the shop of Mademoiselle Rigolot in the Place de la Fontaine at Villers-Cotterets.”

  “Well, and what of that?” asked François. “Well, if she came back to-day, I should not go away till to-morrow.... There will be a jollification here for the return of this mirror of virtue!”

  “Listen, Mathieu,” said François in a more serious way than he had done till then. “When you speak before others than myself about Mademoiselle Catherine in this house, you must pay attention in whose presence you speak.”

  “Why so?”

  “Because Mademoiselle Catherine is the daughter of Monsieur Guillaume Watrin’s own sister.”

  “Yes, and Monsieur Bernard’s sweetheart, is she not?”

  “As for that, if you are asked, Mathieu,” rejoined François, “I advise you to say that you know nothing about it, do you see?”

  “Well, that’s your mistake; I’ll say what I know — I have seen what I have seen, and heard what I have heard.”

  “Ah,” said François, looking at Mathieu with an expression of disgust, and contempt, so mingled together that it was impossible to say which feeling dominated, “you are quite right to become a flunkey; it was your calling, Mathieu, the spy and informer.... Good luck to you in your new calling! If Bernard comes down, tell him I shall await him a hundred paces from here at the rendezvous, that is to say the Stag’s Leap, do you hear?”

  And flinging his gun over his shoulder with that movement which only belongs to those who have a fully developed habit of wielding that weapon, he went out repeating, “Yes, I won’t unsay what I have said. Mathieu, you are a horrid, nasty fellow!”

  Mathieu saw him depart and smiled his eternal smile; then when the young keeper had disappeared, that bright light of intelligence which had only gleamed for a moment before, once more shone out on his brow, and with a voice full of threatening and getting louder as the object threatened got farther away, he exclaimed:

  “Ah, you won’t unsay what you have said, eh? I am a nasty fellow, am I? I shoot badly, do I? Bernard’s dog protested because I was called Louchonneau like him, eh? I am a spy, a lazybones, an informer! Oh, patience, patience, patience! The world will not come to an end to-day, and perhaps I shall wipe off that score before the end of the world.”

  At that moment the planks of the staircase leading to the first floor creaked, a door opened, and a fine, healthy-looking and powerfully-built young man of five and twenty, equipped from head to foot as a ranger, but for the gun, appeared on the threshold. This was Bernard Watrin, the son of the house, who has been mentioned twice or thrice in the preceding chapters.

  The accoutrement of the young keeper was irreproachable. His blue coat with silver buttons, closed from top to bottom, showed off a figure admirably moulded; velveteen trousers that fitted tight, and leather gaiters coming above the knee, displayed a thigh and a leg magnificently modelled; lastly his dark yellow hair, and his whiskers of a warmer tint than his hair harmonized perfectly with cheeks from which exposure and sunshine had not been able to take the youthful freshness.

  There was something so perfectly sympathetic in the man we have just brought on the scene, that in spite of the firmness of his light blue eyes and the rather hard outline of his chin — the sign of strength of will pushed to the extent of obstinacy, it was impossible not to feel oneself drawn to him.

  But Mathieu was not one of those who yield to that sort of attraction. The physical beauty of Bernard which made so complete a contrast with his own ugliness had always caused the vagabond envy and hate, and assuredly if he had had only to wish for a misfortune twice as great to fall on Bernard, he would not have hesitated to wish to lose an eye in order that Bernard should lose both his, or to break a leg in order that Bernard’s two legs should be broken.

  This feeling was so strong with him that, however he might try to smile at Bernard, he could never manage to smile at him except with the wrong side of his face.

  On that day his smile was greener and more vinegary than ever. There was a sort of constrained and impatient joy in that smile — the smile of Caliban at the first peal of thunder that heralded a storm.

  Bernard paid no attention to the smile. He on the other hand seemed to have a joyful concert singing of youth and life and love in the depths of his heart.

  His look ranged with astonishment, almost with disquietude, around him.

  “Halloa,” said he, “I thought I heard François’ voice. Was he not here a moment ago?”

  “Yes, he was here right enough; but he got impatient at waiting for you and went away.”

  “All right, we shall meet at the rendezvous.” And Bernard went to the chimney-piece, unhooked his gun, blew down the barrels to make sure they were empty and clean, primed the two touch-holes, poured a charge of powder into each barrel and extracted from his game-bag a couple of felt wads.

  “Halloa,” said Mathieu, “you still use stamped-out wads?”

  “Yes; I find they press down the powder more evenly. Halloa, what have I done with my knife?”

  Bernard felt in all his pockets, but could not find the object he had need of.

  “Will you have mine?” asked Mathieu.

  “Yes, give it me.”

  Bernard took the knife, marked two crosses on the bullets and slipped the two bullets into the barrel of his gun.

  “What are you doing, Monsieur Bernard?” asked Mathieu.

  “I am marking my bullets, in order to be able to recognize them if there is a discussion. When two people fire at the same wild boar, and the wild boar has only one bullet in him, it is just as well to know who killed it.”

  And Bernard advanced towards the door, Mathieu following him with his squinting eye; and that eye had at that moment an incredible expression of ferocity in it.

  Then, when the young man was all but on the threshold of the door, he exclaimed:

  “Monsieur Bernard, just a word. Seeing it is your favourite François who has marked down the boar, you know you will not draw a blank... besides, so early in the morning the dogs have no nose.”

  “Well, what is it you want to say to me?”

  “What is it I want to say to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it true that the world’s wonder comes to-day?”

  “Whom are you talking about?” said Bernard, knitting his brows.

  “Why, of Catherine.”

  Hardly had Mathieu uttered that name, when a vigorous box on the ear resounded through the room. He drew back two paces, without the expression of his countenance changing.

  “Halloa, halloa, what’s the matter with you this morning, Monsieur Bernard?”

  “Nothing,” replied the Forester; “only I want to teach you henceforward to pronounce that name with the respect that everybody has for it, — and I especially.”

  “Oh,” said Mathieu, keeping one of his hands on his cheek and rummaging with the other in his pocket; “when you know what is in this paper you will be sorry for that blow you have just given me.”