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