him from a
distance: "It is all finished, my lad; take that back and stay and dine
with us."

Michu, his face perspiring, his clothes soiled with plaster and covered
with fragments of muddy stone from the breach, reached home joyfully and
entered the kitchen where Marthe and her mother were serving the soup in
expectation of his coming.

Just as Michu was turning the faucet of the water-pipe intending to wash
his hands, the justice of peace entered the house accompanied by his
clerk and the forester.

"What have you come for, Monsieur Pigoult?" asked Michu.

"In the name of the Emperor and the laws, I arrest you," replied the
justice.

The three gendarmes entered the kitchen leading Gothard. Seeing the
silver lace on their hats Marthe and her mother looked at each other in
terror.

"Pooh! why?" asked Michu, who sat down at the table and called to his
wife, "Give me something to eat; I'm famished."

"You know why as well as we do," said the justice, making a sign to his
clerk to begin the _proces-verbal_ and exhibiting the warrant of arrest.

"Well, well, Gothard, you needn't stare so," said Michu. "Do you want
some dinner, yes or no? Let them write down their nonsense."

"You admit, of course, the condition of your clothes?" said the justice
of peace; "and you can't deny the words you said just now to Gothard?"

Michu, supplied with food by his wife, who was amazed at his coolness,
was eating with the avidity of a hungry man. He made no answer to
the justice, for his mouth was full and his heart innocent. Gothard's
appetite was destroyed by fear.

"Look here," said the forester, going up to Michu and whispering in his
ear: "What have you done with the senator? You had better make a clean
breast of it, for if we are to believe these people it is a matter of
life or death to you."

"Good God!" cried Marthe, who overheard the last words and fell into a
chair as if annihilated.

"Violette must have played us some infamous trick," cried Michu,
recollecting what Laurence had said in the forest.

"Ha! so you do know that Violette saw you?" said the justice of peace.

Michu bit his lips and resolved to say no more. Gothard imitated him.
Seeing the uselessness of all attempts to make them talk, and knowing
what the neighborhood chose to call Michu's perversity, the justice
ordered the gendarmes to bind his hands and those of Gothard, and take
them both to the chateau, whither he now went himself to rejoin the