But the little rabbit did not, apparently, want even his adoptive uncle. He burrowed yet farther into the cushions of the carriage, his whole body convulsed with weeping. Fragmentary ejaculations of "Papa! Papa!" mingled with appeals for his grandfather and for Elspeth emerged from his sobs, which now started to partake of the character of screams. His grief was getting beyond his control, and La Vireville began to be alarmed. Not only did he think that such abandonment of distress must be bad for the child, to whose nature it seemed so foreign, but it also occurred to him that a passer-by, or even possibly the postilion, hearing such testimony of affliction, and becoming curious as to what was going forward in the chaise, might institute an investigation which could hardly fail of being disastrous. Anne in this state would certainly give the impression that he was being kidnapped—by his rescuer. The émigré pulled up the window nearest to him, which was open, and redoubled his efforts to quiet the boy.
"I want to go home!" screamed Anne. "I want Papa! I want Papa! I want my goldfish!" He beat with his fists against the dingy cushions, and even repulsed his dear Chevalier's attempts at consolation. Fortuné hardly knew him for the same child.
And meanwhile they were slowing down at the entrance to Villers-Bocage, a small place which would not have called for this attention but for the fact that the whole infant population appeared to be at play upon the road, thereby causing their pace to slacken.
"Anne, you must be quiet!" said his 'uncle,' giving him a little shake, and speaking with a severity which he had never thought to employ towards him.
He might as well have tried to restrain a thunderstorm; he had better have been dealing with a refractory Chouan. Anne was now physically incapable of obeying him, nor were the narrow confines of the chaise sufficient to enclose the torrents of his woe.
La Vireville's heart sank as the vehicle came to a standstill, and in another moment the head of the postilion, a Norman youth with a flaming crop of hair, appeared like a setting sun at the window. La Vireville instantly motioned to him to proceed. The youth continued to make signs outside the glass, while other heads, of a rustic type, began to gather behind him. At last, rapidly losing his temper, La Vireville let down the glass.
"What the devil have you pulled up for?" he demanded. "Go on, confound you! We don't want to stop here!"
"I thought something was wrong," responded the youth, though how he could have heard anything through the beat of his horses' hoofs was hard to say. But by now Anne's lamentations, flowing through the opened window, were convincing the inhabitants of the little town that the postilion's surmise was just.
"There is nothing whatever wrong," asserted La Vireville shortly, and, on the surface, mendaciously. "Drive on at once!" And he began to pull up the window.
Ere he could fulfil his intention a large, knotted hand was laid upon it, and its frame became the setting for another study in genre—a large, solemn, be-whiskered old face surmounted by a hat of ancient fashion decorated with a tricolour cockade. The sight of this emblem, and still more of the parti-coloured sash crossing its wearer's breast, caused in the Chouan an outburst of silent blasphemy. From absurd the situation had become dangerous. The worst had come upon them—the intervention of officialdom—and that in a place where they need never have encountered it but for Anne-Hilarion's unfortunate access of woe.