“He is insane!” said the terrified Chupin, “he is mad!”
Then the innkeeper changed his tactics.
“At least you will be reasonable,” he exclaimed. “Let us see, Chupin, what you will do for an old friend? Divide, will you not? No, you say no? What will you give me, comrade? A third? Is that too much? A quarter, then——”
Chupin felt that all the soldiers were enjoying his terrible humiliation. They were sneering at him, and only an instant before they had avoided coming in contact with him with evident horror.
Transported with anger, he pushed Balstain violently aside, crying to the soldiers:
“Come—are we going to spend the night here?”
An implacable hatred gleamed in the eye of the Piedmontese.
He drew his knife from his pocket, and making the sign of the cross in the air:
“Saint-Jean-de-Coche,” he exclaimed, in a ringing voice, “and you, Holy Virgin, hear my vow. May my soul burn in hell if I ever use a knife at my repasts until I have plunged this, which I now hold, into the heart of the scoundrel who has defrauded me!”
Having said this, he disappeared in the woods, and the soldiers took up their line of march.