“What the devil is that cursed old Rigou doing there?” said Soudry to Guerbet, as they saw the green chaise stop before the gate of the Tivoli. “He is one of those tiger-cats whose every step has an object.”
“You may well say cursed,” replied the fat little collector.
“He has gone into the Cafe de la Paix,” remarked Gourdon, the doctor.
“And there’s some trouble there,” added Gourdon the poet; “I can hear them yelping from here.”
“That cafe,” said the abbe, “is like the temple of Janus; it was called the Cafe de la Guerre under the Empire, and then it was peace itself; the most respectable of the bourgeoisie met there for conversation—”
“Conversation!” interrupted the justice of the peace. “What kind of conversation was it which produced all the little Bourniers?”
“—but ever since it has been called, in honor of the Bourbons, the Cafe de la Paix, fights take place there every day,” said Abbe Taupin, finishing the sentence which the magistrate had taken the liberty of interrupting.
This idea of the abbe was, like the quotations from “The Cup-and-Ball,” of frequent recurrence.
“Do you mean that Burgundy will always be the land of fisticuffs?” asked Pere Guerbet.
“That’s not ill said,” remarked the abbe; “not at all; in fact it’s almost an exact history of our country.”