it is! Though it lives in a kind of a burrow, it sometimes stays whole
days under water. Ha, there! it heard you, my good gentleman; it's on
its guard now; for there's not a more suspicious animal on earth; it's
worse than a woman."

"So you call women suspicious, do you?" said Blondet.

"Faith, monsieur, if you come from Paris you ought to know about that
better than I. But you'd have done better for me if you had stayed in
your bed and slept all the morning; don't you see that wake there?
that's where she's gone under. Get up, Mouche! the otter heard
monsieur talking, and now she's scary enough to keep us at her heels
till midnight. Come, let's be off! and good-bye to our thirty francs!"

Mouche got up reluctantly; he looked at the spot where the water
bubbled, pointed to it with his finger and seemed unable to give up
all hope. The child, with curly hair and a brown face, like the angels
in a fifteenth-century picture, seemed to be in breeches, for his
trousers ended at the knee in a ragged fringe of brambles and dead
leaves. This necessary garment was fastened upon him by cords of
tarred oakum in guise of braces. A shirt of the same burlap which made
the old man's trousers, thickened, however, by many darns, open in
front showed a sun-burnt little breast. In short, the attire of the
being called Mouche was even more startlingly simple than that of Pere
Fourchon.

"What a good-natured set of people they are here," thought Blondet;
"if a man frightened away the game of the people of the suburbs of
Paris, how their tongues would maul him!"