I myself believed it for one hour.
THE LITTLE CASK
He was a tall man of forty or thereabout, this Jules Chicot, the innkeeper of Spreville, with a red face and a round stomach, and said by those who knew him to be a smart business man. He stopped his buggy in front of Mother Magloire's farmhouse, and, hitching the horse to the gatepost, went in at the gate.
Chicot owned some land adjoining that of the old woman, which he had been coveting for a long while, and had tried in vain to buy a score of times, but she had always obstinately refused to part with it.
“I was born here, and here I mean to die,” was all she said.
He found her peeling potatoes outside the farmhouse door. She was a woman of about seventy-two, very thin, shriveled and wrinkled, almost dried up in fact and much bent but as active and untiring as a girl. Chicot patted her on the back in a friendly fashion and then sat down by her on a stool.
“Well mother, you are always pretty well and hearty, I am glad to see.”
“Nothing to complain of, considering, thank you. And how are you, Monsieur Chicot?”
“Oh, pretty well, thank you, except a few rheumatic pains occasionally; otherwise I have nothing to complain of.”