[IN THE WOOD]
The Mayor was just going to sit down to breakfast, when he was told that the rural policeman was waiting for him at the Mansion-house with two prisoners, and he went there immediately, and found old Hochedur standing up and watching a middle-class couple of mature years, with a severe look.
The man, a fat old fellow with a red nose and white hair, seemed utterly dejected; while the woman, a little roundabout, fat woman, with shining cheeks, looked at the agent of the authorities who had arrested them, with defiant eyes.
"What is it? What is it? Hochedur?"
The rural policeman made his deposition: He had gone out that morning at his usual time, in order to go on his beat from the forest of Champioux as far as the boundaries of Argenteuil. He had not noticed anything unusual in the country except that it was a fine day, and that the wheat was doing well, when the son of old Bredel, who was going over his vines a second time, called out to him: "Here, Daddy Hochedur, go and have a look into the skirts of the wood, in the first thicket, and you will catch a pair of pigeons there that must be a hundred and thirty years old between them!"
He went in the direction that had been indicated to him, and had gone into the thicket, and there he heard words and gasps, which made him suspect a flagrant breach of morality. Advancing, therefore, on his hands and knees, as if to surprise a poacher, he had arrested the couple who were there present, at the very moment when they were going to abandon themselves to their natural instincts.
The Mayor looked at the culprits in astonishment, for the man was certainly sixty, and the woman fifty-five at least, and so he began to question them, beginning with the man, who replied in such a weak voice that he could scarcely be heard.
"What is your name?" "Nicolas Beaurain." "Your occupation?" "Haberdasher, in the Rue des Martyrs, in Paris." "What were you doing in the wood?" The haberdasher remained silent, with his eyes on his fat stomach; and his hand resting on his thighs, and the Mayor continued: "Do you deny what the officer of the municipal authorities states?" "No, Monsieur." "So you confess it?" "Yes, Monsieur." "What have you to say in your defense?" "Nothing, Monsieur." "Where did you meet the partner in your misdemeanor?" "She is my wife, Monsieur." "Your wife?" "Yes, Monsieur." "Then ... then ... you do not live together ... in Paris?" "I beg your pardon, Monsieur, but we are living together!" "But in that case ... you must be mad, altogether mad, my dear sir, to get caught like that, in the country at ten o'clock in the morning."