At that the poacher halted. “Don’t you wish you might get me!” he said, tauntingly, probably presuming on my conditional promise.
“Do you refuse to report?” demanded the mayor, also halting.
“Et ta sœur!” replied the poacher; “is she reporting at the caserne?”
The mayor replied angrily, and a typical Breton quarrel began, which ended in the mayor biting his 240 thumb-nail at the Lizard and wishing him “St. Hubert’s luck”—an insult tantamount to a curse.
Now St. Hubert was a mighty hunter, and his luck was proverbially marvellous. But as everything goes by contrary in Brittany, to wish a Breton hunter good luck was the very worst thing you could do him. Bad luck was certain to follow—if not that very day, certainly, inexorably, some day.
With wrath in his eyes the Lizard exhausted his profanity, stretching out his arm after the retreating mayor, who waddled away, gesticulating, without turning his head.
“Come back! Toad! Sourd! V-Snake! Bat of the gorse!” shouted the Lizard. “Do you think I’m afraid of your spells, fat owl of Faöuet? Evil-eyed eel! The luck of Ker-Ys to you and yours! Ho fois! Do you think I am frightened—I, Robert the Lizard? Your wife is a camel and your daughter a cow!” The mayor was unmarried, but it didn’t matter. And, moreover, as that official was now out of ear-shot, the Lizard turned anxiously to me.
“Don’t tell me you are superstitious enough to care what the mayor said,” I laughed.
“Dame, m’sieu, we shall have no luck to-day. To-morrow it doesn’t matter—but if we go to-day, bad luck must come to us.”
“To-day? Nonsense!”