“You think that’s different,” said Rigou, “but it comes to the same thing in the end. Well, my dear, you come to me and I’ll send Annette here, and that will be the same thing and different too.”
“Old scamp, you’ll make her ashamed,” said Soudry.
“Ha! gendarme; you want your field to yourself! Well, we all get our happiness where we can find it.”
Jeanette, by her master’s order, disappeared to lay out his clothes.
“You must have promised to marry her when your wife dies,” said Rigou.
“At your age and mine,” replied Soudry, “there’s no other way.”
“With girls of any ambition it would be one way to become a widower,” added Rigou; “especially if Madame Soudry found fault with Jeannette for her way of scrubbing the staircase.”
The remark made the two husbands pensive. When Jeannette returned and announced that all was ready, Soudry said to her, “Come and help me!”—a precaution which made the ex-monk smile.
“There’s a difference, indeed!” said he. “As for me, I’d leave you alone with Annette, my good friend.”
A quarter of an hour later Soudry, in his best clothes, got into the wicker carriage, and the two friends drove round the lake of Soulanges to Ville-aux-Fayes.