Just then a groom in livery on horseback and leading another horse by the bridle galloped up the road toward Conches.

“See! there’s the chateau people sending after you,” said the old man.  “If you want to cross back again I’ll give you a hand.  I don’t mind about getting wet; it saves washing!”

“How about rheumatism?”

“Rheumatism! don’t you see the sun has browned our legs, Mouche and me, like tobacco-pipes.  Here, lean on me, my good gentleman—­you’re from Paris; you don’t know, though you do know so much, how to walk on our rocks.  If you stay here long enough, you’ll learn a deal that’s written in the book o’ nature,—­you who write, so they tell me, in the newspapers.”

Blondet had reached the bank before Charles, the groom, perceived him.

“Ah, monsieur!” he cried; “you don’t know how anxious Madame has been since she heard you had gone through the gate of Conches; she was afraid you were drowned.  They have rung the great bell three times, and Monsieur le cure is hunting for you in the park.”

“What time is it, Charles?”

“A quarter to twelve.”

“Help me to mount.”

“Ha!” exclaimed the groom, noticing the water that dripped from
Blondet’s boots and trousers, “has monsieur been taken in by Pere
Fourchon’s otter?”

The words enlightened the journalist.

“Don’t say a word about it, Charles,” he cried, “and I’ll make it all right with you.”

“Oh, as for that!” answered the man, “Monsieur le comte himself has been taken in by that otter.  Whenever a visitor comes to Les Aigues, Pere Fourchon sets himself on the watch, and if the gentleman goes to see the sources of the Avonne he sells him the otter; he plays the trick so well that Monsieur le comte has been here three times and paid him for six days’ work, just to stare at the water!”

“Heavens!” thought Blondet.  “And I imagined I had seen the greatest comedians of the present day!—­Potier, the younger Baptiste, Michot, and Monrose.  What are they compared to that old beggar?”

“He is very knowing at the business, Pere Fourchon is,” continued Charles; “and he has another string to his bow, besides.  He calls himself a rope-maker, and has a walk under the park wall by the gate of Blangy.  If you merely touch his rope he’ll entangle you so cleverly that you will want to turn the wheel and make a bit of it yourself; and for that you would have to pay a fee for apprenticeship.  Madame herself was taken in, and gave him twenty francs.  Ah! he is the king of tricks, that old fellow!”

The groom’s gossip set Blondet thinking of the extreme craftiness and wiliness of the French peasant, of which he had heard a great deal from his father, a judge at Alencon.  Then the satirical meaning hidden beneath Pere Fourchon’s apparent guilelessness came back to him, and he owned himself “gulled” by the Burgundian beggar.

“You would never believe, monsieur,” said Charles, as they reached the portico at Les Aigues, “how much one is forced to distrust everybody and everything in the country,—­especially here, where the general is not much liked—­”