Their conviction was shaken, for the sparrows cleanse the kitchen-gardens, but eat up the cherries. The owls devour insects, and at the same time bats, which are useful; and, if the moles eat the slugs, they upset the soil. There was one thing of which they were certain: that all game should be destroyed as fatal to agriculture.
One evening, as they were passing along by the wood of Faverges, they found themselves in front of Sorel’s house, at the side of the road. Sorel was gesticulating in the presence of three persons. The first was a certain Dauphin, a cobbler, small, thin, and with a sly expression of countenance; the second, Père Aubain, a village porter, wore an old yellow frock-coat, with a pair of coarse blue linen trousers; the third, Eugène, a man-servant employed by M. Marescot, was distinguished by his beard cut like that of a magistrate.
Sorel was showing them a noose in copper wire attached to a silk thread, which was held by a clamp—what is called a snare—and he had discovered the cobbler in the act of setting it.
“You are witnesses, are you not?”
Eugène lowered his chin by way of assent, and Père Aubain replied:
“Once you say so.”
What enraged Sorel was that anyone should have the audacity to set up a snare at the entrance of his lodge, the rascal imagining that one would have no idea of suspecting it in such a place.
Dauphin adopted the blubbering system:
“I was walking over it; I even tried to break it.” They were always accusing him. They had a grudge against him; he was most unlucky.
Sorel, without answering him, had drawn out of his pocket a note-book and a pen and ink, in order to make out an official report.