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Two years after the wheelwright of Coq received a visit which he little expected. An old man, tall, thin and yellow, came into the workshop carrying a scythe on his shoulder.
“Are you bringing me your scythe to haft anew, master?”
“No, faith, my scythe is never unhafted.”
“Then how can I serve you?”
“By following me: your hour is come.”
“The devil,” said the great golfer, “could you not wait a little till I have finished this wheel?”
“Be it so! I have done hard work today and I have well earned a smoke.”
“In that case, master, sit down there on the causeuse. I have at your service some famous tobacco at seven petards the pound.”
“That’s good, faith; make haste.”
And Death lit his pipe and seated himself at the door on the elm trunk.
Laughing in his sleeve, the wheelwright of Coq returned to his work. At the end of a quarter of an hour Death called to him:
“Ho! faith, will you soon have finished?”
The wheelwright turned a deaf ear and went on planing, singing:
“Attendez-moi sur l’orme;
Vous m’attendrez longtemps.”
“I don’t think he hears me,” said Death. “Ho! friend, are you ready?”
“Va-t-en voir s’ils viennent, Jean,
Va-t-en voir s’ils viennent,”
replied the singer.
“Would the brute laugh at me?” said Death to himself.
And he tried to rise.
To his great surprise he could not detach himself from the causeuse. He then understood that he was the sport of a superior power.
“Let us see,” he said to Roger. “What will you take to let me go? Do you wish me to prolong your life ten years?”
“J’ai de bon tabac dans ma tabatière,”
sang the great golfer.
“Will you take twenty years?”
“Il pleut, il pleut, bergère;
Rentre tes blancs moutons.”
“Will you take a fifty, wheelwright?—may the devil admire you!”
The wheelwright of Coq intoned:
“Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
A Saint-Malo débarquez sans naufrage.”
In the meanwhile the clock of Condé had just struck four, and the boys were coming out of school. The sight of this great dry heron of a creature who struggled on the causeuse, like a devil in a holy-water pot, surprised and soon delighted them.
Never suspecting that when seated at the door of the old, Death watches the young, they thought it funny to put out their tongues at him, singing in chorus:
“Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
A Saint-Malo débarquez sans naufrage.”
“Will you take a hundred years?” yelled Death.
“Hein? How? What? Were you not speaking of an extension of a hundred years? I accept with all my heart, master; but let us understand: I am not such a fool as to ask for the lengthening of my old age.”
“Then what do you want?”
“From old age I only ask the experience which it gives by degrees. ‘Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait!’ says the proverb. I wish to preserve for a hundred years the strength of a young man, and to acquire the knowledge of an old one.”
“So be it,” said Death; “I shall return this day a hundred years.”
“Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
A Saint-Malo débarquez sans naufrage.”