And the brigadier added:
“Polyte has been sleeping there for three weeks, for the thief has no place of his own to go to!”
The gendarme made a little joke:
“He takes the shepherd's blankets.”
Madame Lecacheur, who was seized by a fresh access of rage, of rage increased by a married woman's anger against debauchery, exclaimed:
“It is she, I am sure. Go there. Ah, the blackguard thieves!”
But the brigadier was quite unmoved.
“One minute,” he said. “Let us wait until twelve o'clock, as he goes and dines there every day. I shall catch them with it under their noses.”
The gendarme smiled, pleased at his chief's idea, and Lecacheur also smiled now, for the affair of the shepherd struck him as very funny; deceived husbands are always a joke.
Twelve o'clock had just struck when the brigadier, followed by his man, knocked gently three times at the door of a little lonely house, situated at the corner of a wood, five hundred yards from the village.