Guicheaux screwed his hatchet face into a kind of knot.
“Your pardon, captain, Madame Jeanne is a great lady.”
“And has some spite against me. Well?”
Guicheaux looked at Hopart; his comrade returned an eloquent grin.
“Well, captain, we two took that harping devil and half drowned him in the ditch.”
“You did?”
“But madame had her weapons ready. Brother Hopart, be so good as to scratch my back.”
The fat man pulled up the thin man’s shirt, and Guicheaux displayed a back still livid from the blows of a whip.
“Madame knows how to argue, captain,” and he chuckled.
“What, they whipped you?”