Then the other cried, in a still louder tone:
"Conscript, you had better come, or beware!"
Zébédé, with his great hooked nose, his gray eyes and thin lips, never bore too good a character for mildness. He went up to the hussar and asked:
"What is that you say?"
"I tell you to take up those bundles of straw, and quickly, too. Do you hear, conscript?"
He was quite an old man, with mustaches and red, bushy whiskers. Zébédé seized one of the latter, but received two blows in the face. Nevertheless, a fist-full of the whisker remained in his grasp, and, as the dispute had attracted a crowd to the spot, the hussar shook his finger, saying:
"You will hear from me to-morrow, conscript."
"Very good," returned Zébédé; "we shall see. You will probably hear from me too, veteran."
He came immediately after to tell me all this, and I, knowing that he had never handled a weapon more warlike than a pickaxe, could not help trembling for him.
"Listen, Zébédé," I said; "all that there now remains for you to do, since you do not want to desert, is to ask pardon of this old fellow; for those veterans all know some fearful tricks of fence which they have brought from Egypt or Spain, or somewhere else. If you wish, I will lend you a crown to pay for a bottle of wine to make up the quarrel."