"To be sure."
"And the big beast didn't eat you?" asked Bertrand.
"What big beast?"
"Pardi! the beast with long hair and red mane that was lying there."
Dubourg turned, and his eye fell on his cloak and wig; he divined the source of the peasants' terror, and gave way to a longing to laugh, which he could not control for several minutes. The villagers, hearing his laughter, began to take courage; the fugitives stopped, the women rose and arranged their dresses; everybody looked at Dubourg and awaited an explanation from him. He went back to the shed, took his cloak in one hand and his wig in the other, and returned to the villagers.
"Here, my friends, is the beast that seems to have frightened you. I abandon it to your wrath."
As he spoke, he threw the cloak and wig on the ground; and the peasants drew near, ventured to touch them, and laughed with Dubourg, saying:
"What! is that what it was? Mon Dieu! what a pack of idiots!"
At this juncture, Latouche descended from his pear-tree, crying:
"I told you that that idiot of a Bertrand, who's as cowardly as a hare, had told us some fool story, and taken a nut-cracker for an ox. Tell me, now, if I wasn't right."