"Thiedot had better keep in his own house," growled the carpenter,
clenching his fists.

"It looks well for a tramp like you to insult gentlemen like us,"
continued the lackey, in an imposing tone. "And did you not say that
when I took Mademoiselle to mass I looked like a green toad upon the box,
..thus trying to dishonor my physique and my clothes? Did you not say
that?"

"Only a joke about the color of your livery. They call the others
measles and lobsters."

"Lobsters are lobsters," replied the coachman, in an imperative tone; "if
that vexes them, they can take care of themselves. But I will not allow
any one to attack my honor or that of my beasts by calling them screws--
and that is what you did, you vagabond! And did you not say that I sent
bags of oats to Remiremont to be sold, and that, for a month, my team had
steadily been getting thin? Did you ever hear anything so scandalous,
Pere Rousselet? to dare to say that I endanger the lives of my horses?
Did you not say that, you rascal? And did you not say that Mademoiselle
Marianne and I had little private feasts in her room, and that was why I
could not eat more at the table? Here is Rousselet, who has been a
doctor and knows that I am on a diet on account of my weak stomach." At
these words, the servant, carried away by his anger, gave his stomach a
blow with his fist.

"Lambernier," said Rousselet, turning up his lips with a look of
contempt, "I must admit that, for a man well brought up, you have made
most disgusting remarks."