"Lost it? Come here, and and I'll cuff you!" But Bécu interposed, chuckling complacently at the recollection of his son's precocious gallantries.
"Let him be! He's getting a big boy now. And so, you scum of the earth, you've been amusing yourselves together? Ah! the lickerish dog."
"Go and play," concluded Hyacinthe paternally. "And mind you're to be good."
"They're as drunk as pigs," said Nénesse, with an air of disgust, as he went back to the ball-room.
La Trouille laughed.
"I should just think so! I quite expected it. That's why they're so amiable."
The dancing was getting lively. The explosive blasts of Clou's trombone, which smothered the faint music of the little fiddle, were all that could be heard. The ground, watered over copiously, was turning to mud under the thick-soled boots of the dancers; and presently, from all the shaken petticoats, from the jackets and bodices that grew moist under the arm-pits with broad stains of sweat, there uprose a strong goat-like smell, accentuated by the smoky acridity of the lamps. Between two quadrilles, a sensation was created by the arrival of Berthe, Macqueron's daughter, arrayed in a foulard dress, exactly like those that the tax-collector's young ladies had worn at Cloyes, on Saint Lubin's day. Could her parents have given her leave to come? Or had she slipped out behind their backs? It was observable that she danced all the time with the son of a wheelwright, whom her father had forbidden her to speak to, on account of a family quarrel. Jests were bandied about. Apparently she was no longer content with her pernicious solitary habits.
Hyacinthe, tipsy as he was, had, for the last moment or so, noticed that beast Lequeu, stationed beside the communicating doorway, and watching Berthe as she curvetted about in her gallant's arms. He could not restrain himself.
"I say, Monsieur Lequeu," he exclaimed, "you're not leading your sweetheart out?"
"What sweetheart?" asked the schoolmaster, green with bile.