“The government never says anything else; it can’t, poor government!” said Fourchon, seized with a sudden tenderness for the government. “Yes, I pity it, that good government; it is very unlucky,—it hasn’t a penny, like us; but that’s very stupid of a government that makes the money itself, very stupid! Ah! if I were the government—”
“But,” cried Courtecuisse, “they tell me in Ville-aux-Fayes that Monsieur de Ronquerolles talked about our rights in the Assembly.”
“That’s in Monsieur Rigou’s newspaper,” said Vaudoyer, who in his capacity of ex-field-keeper knew how to read and write; “I read it—”
In spite of his vinous tenderness, old Fourchon, like many of the lower classes whose faculties are stimulated by drunkenness, was following, with an intelligent eye and a keen ear, this curious discussion which a variety of asides rendered still more curious. Suddenly, he stood up in the middle of the room.
“Listen to the old one, he’s drunk!” said Tonsard, “and when he is, he is twice as full of deviltry; he has his own and that of the wine—”
“Spanish wine, and that trebles it!” cried Fourchon, laughing like a satyr. “My sons, don’t butt your head straight at the thing,—you’re too weak; go at it sideways. Lay low, play dead; the little woman is scared. I tell you, the thing’ll come to an end before long; she’ll leave the place, and if she does the Shopman will follow her, for she’s his passion. That’s your plan. Only, to make ‘em go faster, my advice is to get rid of their counsellor, their support, our spy, our ape—”
“Who’s that?”
“The damned abbe, of course,” said Tonsard; “that hunter after sins, who thinks the host is food enough for us.”
“That’s true,” cried Vaudoyer; “we were happy enough till he came. We ought to get rid of that eater of the good God,—he’s the real enemy.”
“Finikin,” added Fourchon, using a nickname which the abbe owed to his prim and rather puny appearance, “might be led into temptation and fall into the power of some sly girl, for he fasts so much. Then if we could catch him in the act and drum him up with a good charivari, the bishop would be obliged to send him elsewhere. It would please old Rigou devilish well. Now if your daughter, Courtecuisse, would leave Auxerre—she’s a pretty girl, and if she’d take to piety, she might save us all. Hey! ran tan plan!—”