Isaure rose with dignity; she no longer trembled, for she felt offended; and looking fixedly at the man whom she had received as her guest, she answered:
"Your questions surprise me, monsieur! Who, pray, has employed you to ask them?"
"Who? Morbleu! I myself, who ask them; I, who question you! Is there any need of making so much fuss about saying: ‘I love this one better than that one?’"
"No one ever spoke to me so, monsieur, and when my dear mother was alive——"
"I am not talking about your mother. If she were here you probably would not receive visits from young men every morning. I see that you make the most of your liberty; don’t take so much pains to play the prude! Grimaces do not succeed with me. Come, sacrebleu! answer me!"
The stranger rose abruptly and walked toward Isaure. She, yielding to a thrill of fear caused by his approach, stepped back with a cry of alarm. Instantly Vaillant, thinking that his mistress was menaced, sprang to his feet, and with the rapidity of a lightning flash leaped upon the stranger and seized his leg with his teeth.
"Well, well! call off your dog! Heavens and earth! Don’t you see that he is biting me?"
Isaure called Vaillant, who made up his mind only with great reluctance to release the leg that he had seized, and returned to his mistress, growling, and keeping his flashing eyes fixed on the stranger.
"I beg pardon, monsieur," said Isaure, "but this faithful animal evidently thought you were threatening me."
"Morbleu! why do you shriek because I approach you? Do you think that I am going to eat you? What fools these girls are! You have a guardian there who does not understand joking; the rascal—his teeth went into my flesh. If he should receive your young men in the same way, I fancy that they would not come so often. But you don’t shriek when they come near, do you?—Adieu, my pretty discreet one! Oh! I shall soon find out what you refuse to tell me to-day! Yes, I shall find out all about you. I do not believe that you are a witch; but I do not think it natural that you should talk like the ladies from the city, that you should live alone with your flocks, and that you should be rich enough to entertain for nothing all those who stop at your house. There is something underneath it, and I shall find out what it is; for as I have told you, it is not easy to deceive me, and I believe neither in the innocence which runs about fields, nor in Platonic love, nor in innate knowledge. Adieu."