for me, he appeared quite exasperated and kept saying to me: "I have had
enough of that pig Morin's affair, do you hear?"

Of course I was obliged to go also, and it was one of the hardest
moments of my life. I could have gone on arranging that business as long
as I lived, and when we were in the railway carriage, after shaking
hands with her in silence, I said to Rivet: "You are a mere brute!" And
he replied: "My dear fellow, you were beginning to excite me
confoundedly."

On getting to the _Fanal_ office, I saw a crowd waiting for us, and as
soon as they saw us they all exclaimed: "Well, have you settled the
affair of _that pig of a Morin_?" All La Rochelle was excited about it,
and Rivet, who had got over his ill-humor on the journey, had great
difficulty in keeping himself from laughing as he said: "Yes, we have
managed it, thanks to Labarbe." And we went to Morin's.

He was sitting in an easy chair, with mustard plasters on his legs, and
cold bandages on his head, nearly dead with misery. He was coughing with
the short cough of a dying man, without any one knowing how he had
caught it, and his wife looked at him like a tigress ready to eat him,
and as soon as he saw us he trembled so violently as to make his hands
and knees shake, so I said to him immediately: "It is all settled, you
dirty scamp, but don't do such a thing again."

He got up, choking, took my hands and kissed them as if they had
belonged to a prince, cried, nearly fainted, embraced Rivet and even
kissed Madame Morin, who gave him such a push as to send him staggering
back into his chair, but he never got over the blow: his mind had been
too much upset. In all the country round, moreover, he was called