"I belong in Vatan," she answered.
Hearing Rouget's voice, an ill-looking man, standing at some distance in the deeper waters of the brook, raised his head. "What are you about, Flore?" he said, "While you are talking instead of catching, the creatures will get away."
"Why have you come here from Vatan?" continued the doctor, paying no heed to the interruption.
"I am catching crabs for my uncle Brazier here."
"Rabouiller" is a Berrichon word which admirably describes the thing it is intended to express; namely, the action of troubling the water of a brook, making it boil and bubble with a branch whose end-shoots spread out like a racket. The crabs, frightened by this operation, which they do not understand, come hastily to the surface, and in their flurry rush into the net the fisher has laid for them at a little distance. Flore Brazier held her "rabouilloir" in her hand with the natural grace of childlike innocence.
"Has your uncle got permission to hunt crabs?"
"Hey! are not we all under a Republic that is one and indivisible?" cried the uncle from his station.
"We are under a Directory," said the doctor, "and I know of no law which allows a man to come from Vatan and fish in the territory of Issoudun"; then he said to Flore, "Have you got a mother, little one!"
"No, monsieur; and my father is in the asylum at Bourges. He went mad from a sun-stroke he got in the fields."
"How much do you earn?"