"Té-té!" interrupted Brother Marc Antoine, with a chuckle. "Wake up, Zephirine—wake up, old lady, and listen to this." Zephirine, smitten affectionately on the ham, answered only with a short squeal like a bagpipe, and buried her snout deeper in the grass.
"I like that," the old man went on. "To think of travelling down a river three days' journey, and putting up each night at the same auberge! Vieux drôle d'Hèrodote! But does he really pitch that yarn, my father?"
"The village, if I remember, was called Arderica, and doubtless its inhabitants were proud of it. Yet we of Ambialet have a better right to be proud, since the wonder that encircles us is not of man's making but a miracle of God: although,"—and here Père Philibert swung about and fixed his eyes on the baker—"our local pride in Ambialet and its history, and its institutions and its immemorial customs, are of no moment to M. Champollion, who comes, I think, from Rodez or thereabouts."
In an instant the old woman had seized on this cue.
"Té! Listen, then, to what the good father calls you!" she shrilled, advancing on the baker and snapping finger and thumb under his nose; "an interloper, a scoundrel from the Rouergue, where all are scoundrels! You with your yeast from Germany! It is such fellows as you that gave the Prussians our provinces, and now you must settle here, turning our stomachs upside down—honest stomachs of Ambialet."
"Bah!" exclaimed Champollion defiantly. "You!—a sage femme—qui ne fonctionne pas, d'ailleurs!"
So the storm broke, and so for ten good minutes it raged. In the hurly-burly, from the clash and din of winged words, I disengaged something of the true quarrel. Champollion (it seemed) had bought a business and settled down as baker in Ambialet. Now, his predecessor had always bought yeast from the Widow Vacher, next door, who prepared it by an ancient family recipe; but this new-comer had introduced some new yeast of commerce—levûre viennoise—and so deprived her of her small earnings. In revenge—so he asserted, and she did not deny it—she had bribed a travelling artist from Paris to decorate the bakery sign with certain scurrilities, and the whole village had conned next morning a list of the virtues of the Champollion yeast and of the things—mostly unmentionable—it was warranted à faire sauter. There were further charges and counter-charges—as that the widow's Cochin-China cock had been found with its neck wrung; and that she, as sage femme, and the only one in Ambialet, had denied her services to Madame Champollion at a time when humanity should override all private squabbles. Brother Marc Antoine rubbed his hands and repeatedly smote Zephirine on the flank.
"The pity of it—the treat you are missing!"—but Zephirine snored on, contemptuous.
After this had lasted, as I say, some ten minutes, Père Philibert held up a hand.
"I was about to tell you," said he, "something of this Ambialet of which you two are citizens. It is a true tale; and if you can pierce to the instruction it holds for you both, you will go away determined to end this scandal of our town and live in amity. Shall I proceed?"