Daylight was spreading its golden hues upon the posts of the shed when Mathéus was awakened by ringing shouts of laughter.
“Ha! ha! ha! See—see, Dame Thérèse!” cried Coucou Peter. “Look at the little rascal! Isn’t he cunning? Isn’t he? He’s born to be hanged!—ha! ha! ha!—he’s certainly born to be hanged!”
Maître Frantz, having turned his eyes in the direction whence these joyous exclamations proceeded, saw his disciple near a trellis adjoining the Three Roses. This trellis, decked with trees, was covered with magnificent peaches. Coucou Peter was holding out one of these peaches to the child in its pannier on Schimel’s back. The child extended his little hands to seize it, and the jolly fiddler advanced and drew it back, laughing till the tears ran down his cheeks.
Dame Thérèse, from the other side, looked at the infant with a tender smile; she appeared very happy, and yet there was a vague melancholy in her look; Hans Aden gravely looked on, as he smoked his pipe with his elbow resting on the paling.
Nothing more charming than this morning picture could be looked upon; there was so much of unaffected gaiety, good-humour, and tenderness imprinted on the features of Coucou Peter, that Maître Frantz said to himself—“What an honest face! how like a child he amuses himself! How happy he is! how lighthearted! He is the best lad I have ever known! What a pity that his sensual instincts and disorderly love of the flask often carry him beyond the limits of propriety!”
While these thoughts were passing through his mind, the good man rose and shook the straw from his clothes; he then advanced, took off his hat, and saluted the worthy people, wishing them “Good day.”
Dame Thérèse replied by a simple inclination of the head, so absent-minded was she; but Coucou Peter cried—
“Maître Frantz, look at this beautiful child! what fun he is! Tell us what race he belongs to!”
“This child belongs to the bullfinch family,” replied Mathéus, unhesitatingly.
“To the bullfinch family!” cried Coucou Peter, taken completely by surprise. “Faith, not to flatter you, Maître Frantz—I—I think he has very good anthropo-zoological reasons for belonging to the family of the bullfinches.”