“I had something in hand; what in the devil did I have in hand?”
“Be kind enough to listen to me, monsieur. I tell you that your wife has been insulted!”
“Insulted! you! Madame de Belleville! That strikes me as most extraordinary, for everybody in the neighborhood bows to the ground before us. They don’t talk about anything else but the dinner we gave them. They think that you ride a horse like Madame Saqui, like the late Franconi, I should say; they shout ‘hurrah!’ when you pass, and they are constantly throwing bouquets to us.”
“That’s just the reason, monsieur, why it’s an outrage that a woman, a child and a dog should have formed a league against me!”
“What! it was a dog, and a woman, and a child, who had the audacity to insult you?” cried Chamoureau, recovering all his courage when he found that there was no man concerned in the affair. “Fichtre! bless my soul! vive Dieu! where are the rascals, pray, that I may punish them! I will whip the woman, I mean the child—no, I mean the dog; in fact, I will castigate all three of them.”
“When it comes to administering punishment, I shall not need you, monsieur; what I want of you is that you should make inquiries and find out, first, whom the child belongs to—a little boy of seven or eight, I should think, who looks like a little villain, and who threw stones at my horse.”
“Ah! I’ll chastise that little scamp. What! he dared! Really, there aren’t any children nowadays!”
“He was dressed in a short brown jacket, worn out at the elbows, and torn everywhere, dirty green breeches covered with patches, no stockings, shoes full of holes, and nothing on his head except a forest of black hair which gives him the look of an imp.”
“Is the little fellow a beggar?”
“He looks like it, but I don’t say that he begged of me. You are to find out whom he belongs to—what his parents do; then I will take it on myself to go to speak to them.”