In spite of this violent attack, the impudent fellow did not let the girl go: he kissed her on the throat, on the nape of her neck, on her cheeks, crying joyously—
“Oh, how good it is! beat away! beat away! I laugh at it! I like it!”
Everybody came to the windows and laughed at what was going on; the old women squalled, the dogs barked, and Coucou Peter—red, moist, and out of breath—repeated—
“One more little kiss, for love of the peregrination of souls.”
“Ah, the rogue!” said Mathéus; “what an odd disciple I have there!”
At length, seeing the peasants with their sticks running towards the place, Coucou Peter mounted Bruno in haste, leaped over the watertrough, and rode into the stable, crying—
“How pretty the girls of Oberbronn are! They’re as sweet in the mouth as cherries, and as crisp as filberts!”
Then he tried to fasten the door, for the peasant lads were furious.
Unluckily, Ludwig Spengler, the garde champêtre’s son, whose sweetheart he had kissed, arrived almost as soon as he, and pushed his stick between the wall and the door, and the whole of them rushed into the stable. Coucou Peter, yelling like the deuce, and calling out—“Friends!—my dear friends—it was all a joke—nothing but a joke!” was soundly thrashed.
They dragged him out, and blows with sticks were showered on him like hail.