ed from the knowledge of
everyone, he forgot the Spaniard and his granary. Fario came back to
Issoudun to deliver his corn, after various trips and business
manoeuvres undertaken to raise the price of cereals. The morning after
his arrival he noticed that the roof the church of the Capuchins was
black with pigeons. He cursed himself for having neglected to examine
its condition, and hurried over to look into his storehouse, where he
found half his grain devoured. Thousands of mice-marks and rat-marks
scattered about showed a second cause of ruin. The church was a
Noah's-ark. But anger turned the Spaniard white as a bit of cambric
when, trying to estimate the extent of the destruction and his
consequence losses, he noticed that the grain at the bottom of the
heap, near the floor, was sprouting from the effects of water, which
Max had managed to introduce by means of tin tubes into the very
centre of the pile of wheat. The pigeons and the rats could be
explained by animal instinct; but the hand of man was plainly visible
in this last sign of malignity.

Fario sat down on the steps of a chapel altar, holding his head
between his hands. After half an hour of Spanish reflections, he spied
the squirrel, which Goddet could not refrain from giving him as a
guest, playing with its tail upon a cross-beam, on the middle of which
rested one of the uprights that supported the roof. The Spaniard rose
and turned to his watchman with a face that was as calm and cold as an
Arab's. He made no complaint, but went home, hired laborers to gather
into sacks what remained of the sound grain, and to spread in the sun
all that was moist, so as to save as much as possible; then, after
estimating that his losses amounted to about three fifths, he attended
to filling his orders. But his previous manipulations of the market
had raised the price of cereals, and he lost on the three fifths he
was obliged to buy to fill his orders; so that his losses amounted
really to more than half. The Spaniard, who had no enemies, at once
attributed this revenge to Gilet. He was convinced that Maxence and
some others were the authors of all the nocturnal mischief, and had in
all probability carried his cart up the embankment of the tower, and
now intended to amuse themselves by ruining him. It was a matter to
him of over three thousand francs,--very nearly the whole capital he
had scraped together since the peace. Driven by the desire for
vengeance, the man now d