Blondet, placed by direction of the old fellow in such a way that the sun was in his eyes, thrashed the water with much satisfaction to himself.
“Go on, go on!” cried Pere Fourchon; “on the rock side; the burrow is there, to your left!”
Carried away by excitement and by his long waiting, Blondet slipped from the stones into the water.
“Ha! brave you are, my good gentleman! Twenty good Gods! I see him between your legs! you’ll have him!—Ah! there! he’s gone—he’s gone!” cried the old man, in despair.
Then, in the fury of the chase, the old fellow plunged into the deepest part of the stream in front of Blondet.
“It’s your fault we’ve lost him!” he cried, as Blondet gave him a hand to pull him out, dripping like a triton, and a vanquished triton. “The rascal, I see him, under those rocks! He has let go his fish,” continued Fourchon, pointing to something that floated on the surface. “We’ll have that at any rate; it’s a tench, a real tench.”
Just then a groom in livery on horseback and leading another horse by the bridle galloped up the road toward Conches.
“See! there’s the chateau people sending after you,” said the old man. “If you want to cross back again I’ll give you a hand. I don’t mind about getting wet; it saves washing!”
“How about rheumatism?”
“Rheumatism! don’t you see the sun has browned our legs, Mouche and me, like tobacco-pipes. Here, lean on me, my good gentleman—you’re from Paris; you don’t know, though you do know so much, how to walk on our rocks. If you stay here long enough, you’ll learn a deal that’s written in the book o’ nature,—you who write, so they tell me, in the newspapers.”