“I can tell you, all the same. While Chupin was preaching, I also preached, but not in the same strain. The scoundrel reported me. So, in crossing the square, the duke paused before me and remarked: ‘So you are an evil-disposed person?’ I said no, but that I knew my rights. Then he took me by the coat and shook me, and told me that he would cure me, and that he would take possession of his vineyard again. Saint Dieu! When I felt the old rascal’s hand upon me my blood boiled. I pinioned him. Fortunately, six or seven men fell upon me, and compelled me to let him go. But he had better make up his mind not to come prowling around my vineyard!”
He clinched his hands, his eyes blazed ominously, his whole person breathed an intense desire for vengeance.
And M. d’Escorval was silent, fearing to aggravate this hatred, so imprudently kindled, and whose explosion, he believed, would be terrible.
M. Lacheneur had risen from his chair.
“I must go and take possession of my cottage,” he remarked to Chanlouineau; “you will accompany me; I have a proposition to make to you.”
M. and Mme. d’Escorval endeavored to detain him, but he would not allow himself to be persuaded, and he departed with his daughter.
But Maurice did not despair; Marie-Anne had promised to meet him the following day in the pine-grove near the Reche.
CHAPTER VII
The demonstrations which had greeted the Duc de Sairmeuse had been correctly reported by Chanlouineau.