“You did well. For people who travel on foot, they’re very generous.”
“Oh! he has the look of a high liver, has that tall fellow with the red hair; he laughs and drinks and talks for the whole party. If we often had guests like him, there’d be a little more fun here, I tell you! But we haven’t got anybody but that poor woman; and a lunatic is never very gay, especially this one.”
“Humph! you don’t know how to judge people. I don’t say that these peddlers are scoundrels, but——”
“But what?”
“Lock your door tight to-night—do you hear, Lucas?”
“Yes, Monsieur Dupré, yes, I hear,” replied Lucas, whose hilarity suddenly vanished, and who became pale and perturbed, while Dupré returned slowly to his master’s presence.
The old man and Gervais were talking with Monsieur Gerval; the other young man replied only by monosyllables to the questions that were put to him.
“My brother is a little serious,” said tall Gervais to his host, in an undertone. “The trouble is, that he is jealous, he’s afraid that his sweetheart has forgotten him in the two years that he has been away, and that disturbs him.”
“I can understand that, but you don’t seem to have the same anxiety!”
“I? morbleu! woman never worried me! I’m a rake, I am! I snap my fingers at them all, and I am capable of——”