He was referring to the three girls who were still on the bench. Pauline hastened to tie up the parcel which she had made for the Gonin girl.
'There! you can go now,' she said. 'You two just take your companion home, and mind she doesn't fall any more. And, you, look well after your baby, and try not to forget it or leave it anywhere on the road.'
As they were at last setting off Lazare insisted upon examining the Tourmal girl's hamper. She had already contrived to stow away in it an old coffee-pot, which had been thrown aside in a corner and which she had managed to steal. Then all three of the little hussies were driven away, the young drunkard tottering along between the two others.
'What a dreadful lot they are!' exclaimed the priest, sitting down by Chanteau's side. 'God has certainly abandoned them. Some have children directly after their first Communion, and others take to drinking and thieving like their parents. Ah, well! I've warned them of what will happen to them some day!'
'I say, my dear fellow,' then began the Doctor, addressing Lazare in an ironical tone, 'are you thinking of building those famous stockades of yours over again?'
Lazare made an angry gesture. Any allusion to his defeat in his struggle with the sea exasperated him.
'No indeed!' he cried. 'I would let the sea sweep into our own house, without even putting a broom-handle across the road to stay its course. No, no! indeed. I've been very foolish as it is, but one doesn't commit that kind of folly again. I actually saw those scoundrels dancing with delight on the day of the catastrophe! Do you know what I begin to think? I feel sure they had sawn through the beams on the day before the flood-tide, for they would never have given way as they did if they had not been tampered with.'
He tried in this way to salve his wounded pride as an engineer. Then, stretching his hand towards Bonneville, he added:
'Let them all go to smash! I will take my turn at dancing then!'
'Don't say such wicked things!' Pauline observed in her quiet manner. 'Only the poor may be excused for being wicked. You ought to build up the stockade again in spite of everything.'