"God preserve you both, my child!" And the old man returned to the kitchen.
Scarcely had he turned his back than the limping rascal made one of those supremely insulting and derisive gestures familiar to all the blackguards of Paris, consisting in slapping the nape of the neck repeatedly with the left hand, darting the right hand quite open continually out in a straight line. With the most consummate audacity, this dangerous child had just gleaned, under the mask of guileless tenderness and apprehension for his father, information most important for the furtherance of the schemes of the Chouette and Schoolmaster. He had ascertained during the last few minutes that the part of the building where he slept was only occupied by Madame Georges, Fleur-de-Marie, an old female servant, and one of the farm-labourers. Upon his return to the room he was to share with the blind man, Tortillard carefully avoided approaching him. The former, however, heard his step, and growled out:
"Where have you been, you vagabond?"
"What! you want to know, do you, old blind 'un?"
"Oh, I'll make you pay for all you have made me suffer this evening, you wretched urchin!" exclaimed the Schoolmaster, rising furiously, and groping about in every direction after Tortillard, feeling by the walls as a guide. "I'll strangle you when I catch you, you young fiend—you infernal viper!"
"Poor, dear father! How prettily he plays at blind-man's buff with his own little boy," said Tortillard, grinning, and enjoying the ease with which he escaped from the impotent attempts of the Schoolmaster to seize him, who, though impelled to the exertion by his overboiling rage, was soon compelled to cease, and, as had been the case before, to give up all hopes of inflicting the revenge he yearned to bestow on the impish son of Bras Rouge.
Thus compelled to submit to the impudent persecution of his juvenile tormentor, and await the propitious hour when all his injuries could safely be avenged, the brigand determined to reserve his powerless wrath for a fitting opportunity of paying off old scores, and, worn out in body by his futile violence, threw himself, swearing and cursing, on the bed.
"Dear father!—sweet father!—have you got the toothache that you swear so? Ah, if Monsieur le Curé heard you, what would he say to you? He would give you such penance! Oh, my!"
"That's right!—go on!" replied the ruffian, in a hollow and suppressed voice, after long enduring this entertaining vivacity on the part of the young gentleman. "Laugh at me!—mock me!—make sport of my calamity, cowardly scoundrel that you are! That is a fine, noble action, is it not? Just worthy of such a mean, ignoble, contemptible soul as dwells within that wretched, crooked body!"
"Oh, how fine we talk! How nice we preach about being generous, and all that, don't we?" cried Tortillard, bursting into peals of laughter. "I beg your pardon, dear father, but I can't possibly help thinking it so funny to hear you, whose fingers were regular fish-hooks, picking and stealing whatever came in their way; and, as for generosity, I beg you don't mention it, because, till you got your eyes poked out I don't suppose you ever thought of such a word!"