At last they stood in front of the little building, and the children said, their voices trembling with fear and excitement:
"There—look, in there!"
Bertrand and Claudine thrust their heads forward, saw the horrifying object, and dared not advance; the husband turned pale and drew closer to his wife, who motioned to the children not to go any nearer.
"Let's go and call help," said Bertrand at last, in a choking voice.
"S'pose you fire at it, goodman."
"I guess not! my gun's only loaded with salt; that wouldn't kill him, but would just wake him up, and he'd be mad and go for us."
"Ah! you're right, you mustn't fire; let's run to the village. Come, children. Great God! I hope he won't wake up!"
Bertrand had already started; he ran, as if the beast were after him, to the village, which was only a gunshot from his house, and he was soon joined by Claudine. They both told everybody they met what they had found in their garden. As fear always magnifies objects, the beast they had seen became as large as a bull; and as events are always exaggerated by passing from mouth to mouth, because everyone adds a little to what he hears, the beast was transformed from a bull to a camel, then into a lion, then into an elephant; nor would it have stopped there if they had been able to think of any larger animal.
The one undoubted fact was that there was an extraordinary creature in Bertrand's garden, and in a moment that news had put the whole village in a ferment. The people assembled, and took counsel together; the women went to fetch their husbands from the fields, and the mothers brought their little ones into the house and forbade them to go out. They called on the mayor, who, like his constituents, was an honest peasant, and who declared that he knew no more about beasts than did the other inhabitants of his bailiwick. But there was a certain Latouche in the village, who had once been a customs clerk at the barrier in Paris, and who set up for a wit, a joker, and a scholar. They hunted up Latouche, who was at work on a process of making preserves without sugar, and told him of the event which had upset the equilibrium of the whole village.
Latouche listened gravely, passed his hand under his chin, required every detail to be repeated several times, made a pretence of reflecting long and profoundly, and said at last: