Madame Leclerc adjured Neddy. Ladies do not like their servants to encourage followers. She shook her head at the lover and bade him return. But passion sometimes renders its victims insensible to the dictates of duty; Neddy still pursued.
On arriving at her door, near the Porte du Demandeur, the florist’s wife caught up a stick, and charged from her doorstep upon the young and ardent lover. The lady was exasperated at the silent contempt he had exhibited for her entreaties and objurgations. She hit him on the nose, she whacked his ribs, she beat his back, and the poor ass brayed with pain and rising indignation. The she-ass brayed sympathetically.
Madame Leclerc’s blows fell faster and more furiously, and then the lion under the ass’s skin became apparent. Neddy reared, and falling on the old lady, bit her in the arm.
The brayings of the animals and the cries of the lady attracted a crowd, and the combatants were parted. The washerwoman’s ass was consigned, with back-turned ears and palpitating sides, to confinement in a stable. Madame Leclerc retired to her apartment exhausted from her battle, and fainted, with feminine dexterity, into the extended arms of monsieur the florist, her husband, and monsieur the deputy florist, his assistant. By slow degrees the lady was brought round, by means of feathers burned under her nose, and a drop of cordial distilled down her throat. And where was the she-ass, the cause of all this mischief? She had been turned out into a clover-field. Such is the way of the world.
Next day the gardener’s wife sent notice to the shop of M. Nepveux that “If any one had lost an ass he would find it at the house of a floral gardener, Faubourg S. Marceau, near the Gobelins.”
Jacques Ferron, husband of the lady who had gone a-marketing on Neddy, had spent the night, as we learn from his express declaration in Court, on the borders of insanity. Not a wink of sleep visited his eyes during the hours of darkness, and the dawn broke upon him tossing feverishly on his pillow, with all the bedclothes in a heap upon the floor.
The news of his Neddy’s whereabouts being discovered, restored his spirits to equanimity. He wept for joy, and despatched his wife to claim the truant, whilst he himself remained in his doorway, with palpitating bosom and extended arms, ready to embrace the returning prodigal.
But, alas! Madame Ferron, on reaching the gardener’s house, learned to her dismay that she was involved in further misfortune. Madame Leclerc demanded damages for the bite she had received, to the amount of 1500 livres, and the ass would not be given up till the sum demanded was paid. Tears and entreaties were in vain; and the washerwoman returned to her husband with drooping head and a soul ravaged by despair.
On the following day, 4th July, a claim against Jacques Ferron for the sum of 1500 livres damages, and 20 sous a day for the keep of the ass, was lodged with the Commissaire Laumonier.
On the 21st August the Court ordered Leclerc to bring forward evidence to establish his claim, and the defendant was bidden challenge it. The case was heard on the 29th of the same month.