The windows were shut. Before undressing, I opened one to breathe the fresh night air, so delightful after a long supper. Before me lay the Canigou, which is wonderful to behold at any time, but which, that night, seemed to me the finest mountain in the world, lit up as it was by a resplendent moon. I remained some minutes contemplating the marvellous sky-line, and I was about to close my window when, looking down, I observed the statue on a pedestal some two-score yards from the house. It was placed at the corner of a quick-set hedge, which divided a little garden from a spacious square perfectly smooth, which, as I learned later, was the town tennis-court. This space, the property of M. de Peyrehorade, had been made over by him to the commune, at the pressing solicitations of his son.
At the distance where I was, it was difficult to make out the attitude of the statue; I could only judge of its height, which seemed to be about six feet. At that moment, two rascals from the town were passing by the tennis-court, pretty close to the hedge, whistling the pretty Roussillon air Montagnes régalades. They stopped to look at the statue; one of them even apostrophized it aloud. He spoke Catalan; but I had been in Roussillon long enough to be able to understand pretty well what he was saying.
“So you’re there, you hussy!” (The Catalan word was more forcible). “You’re there!” he said. “So it’s you who broke Jean Coll’s leg for him! If you belonged to me, I’d break your neck.”
“Bah! What would you break it with?” said the other. “She’s made of copper, so hard that Stephen broke his file on it trying to cut into it. It’s copper of heathen times; it’s harder than I don’t know what.”
“If I had my cold chisel,” (it seems that he was an apprentice locksmith), “I’d soon knock out her big white eyes, as easy as I’d take an almond out of its shell. There’s more than two half-crowns’ worth of silver in them.”
They went a step or two on their way.
“I must wish the idol good-night,” said the taller of the apprentices, stopping short.
He stooped down, and no doubt picked up a stone. I saw him straighten out his arm and throw something, and immediately a sonorous blow rang on the bronze. That same instant, the apprentice put his hand to his head and uttered a cry of pain.
“She’s thrown it back at me!” he exclaimed.
And my two rascals took to their heels. Evidently the stone had rebounded from the metal and had punished the joker for his outrage on the goddess.