“Ugh!” She shook herself. “I thought you’d seen a scorpion on me.”
Bouvier, whose red face seemed to be deepening in colour under the influence of the red Algerian wine, burst out laughing.
“It wasn’t a scorpion he was looking for,” he exclaimed. His thin body shook with mirth till his chair creaked under him.
“It wasn’t a scorpion,” he repeated.
“What was it, then?” said Madame Lemaire.
She looked from one man to the other—from the one who was strange in his laughter, to the other who was even stranger in his gravity.
“What have you been saying about me?” she said, with a flare-up of suspicion.
“Well,” said Bouvier, recovering himself a little, “if you must know, we were talking about the Devil.”
The woman stared and gave the table a shake. Some of her husband’s wine was spilled over it.
“The Devil take you!” he bawled with sudden fury.