As Rigou crossed the Thune, fordable at all seasons, Tonsard came out of the tavern and met him on the high-road.
“Well, Pere Rigou,” he said, “so the Shopman means to make dogs of us?”
“We’ll see about that,” said the usurer, whipping up his horse.
“He’ll protect us,” said Tonsard, turning to a group of women and children who were near him.
“Rigou is thinking as much about you as a cook thinks of the gudgeons he is frying in his pan,” called out Fourchon.
“Take the clapper out of your throat when you are drunk,” said Mouche, pulling his grandfather by the blouse, and tumbling him down on a bank under a poplar tree. “If that hound of a mayor heard you say that, he’d never buy any more of your tales.”
The truth was that Rigou was hurrying to Soulanges in consequence of the warning given him by the steward of Les Aigues, which, in his heart, he regarded as threatening the secret coalition of the valley.