The eighteen looked at each other open-mouthed, and good Daddy La Bretagne scratched his head, and then said: 

“What she asks is quite right, and we must give way,” he replied.

Then they explained themselves, and came to an understanding.  The poor devil did not come like a conqueror, for he was a wretched clown who had just been released from prison, where he had undergone three years’ hard labor for an attempted outrage on a girl, but, with one exception, the best fellow in the world, so the people declared.

“And something nice for me,” the trollop added, “for I can assure you that I mean him to reward me for anything I may do for him.”

From that time the household of eighteen persons consisted of nineteen, and at first all went well.  The clown was very humble, and tried not to be burdensome to them.  Fed, clothed and supplied with tobacco, he tried not to be too exacting in the other matter, and if needful, he would have hauled like the others, but the woman would not allow it.

“You shall not fatigue yourself, my little man,” she said.  “You must reserve yourself entirely for me.”

And he did as she wished.

And soon, the eighteen, who had never been jealous of each other, grew jealous of the favored lover.  Some tried to pick a quarrel with him.  He resisted.  The best fellow in the world, no doubt, but he was not going to be taken for a mussel shut up in its shell, for all that.  Let them call him as lazy as a priest if they liked; he did not mind that, but when they put hairs into his coffee, armsful of rushes among his wreckage, and filth into his soup, they had better look out!

“None of that, all the lot of you, or you will see what I can do,” he used to say.

They repeated the practical jokes, however, and he thrashed them.  He did not try to find out who the culprits were, but attacked the first one he met, so much the worse for him.  With a kick from his wooden clog (it was his specialty) he smashed their noses into a pulp, and having thus acquired the knowledge of his strength, and urged on by his trollop, he soon became a tyrant.  The eighteen felt that they were slaves, and their former paradise where concord and perfect equality had reigned, became a hell, and that state of things could not last.

“Ah!” Daddy La Bretagne growled, “if only I were twenty years younger I would nearly kill him!  I have my Breton’s hot head still, but my confounded legs are no good any longer.”

And he boldly challenged the clown to a duel, in which the latter was to have his legs tied, and then both of them were to sit on the ground and hack at each other with knives.

“Such a duel would be perfectly fair!” he replied, kicking him in the side with one of his clogs, and the woman burst out laughing, and said: 

“At any rate, you cannot compete with him on equal terms as regards myself, so do not worry yourself about it.”