Rouergue, where all are scoundrels!
You with your yeast from Germany! It is such fellows as you that gave the
Prussians our provinces, and now you must settle here, turning our
stomachs upside down--honest stomachs of Ambialet."

"Bah!" exclaimed Champollion defiantly. "You!--a _sage femme--qui ne
fonctionne pas, d'ailleurs!_"

So the storm broke, and so for ten good minutes it raged. In the
hurly-burly, from the clash and din of winged words, I disengaged
something of the true quarrel. Champollion (it seemed) had bought a
business and settled down as baker in Ambialet. Now, his predecessor had
always bought yeast from the Widow Vacher, next door, who prepared it by
an ancient family recipe; but this new-comer had introduced some new yeast
of commerce--_levure viennoise_--and so deprived her of her small
earnings. In revenge--so he asserted, and she did not deny it--she had
bribed a travelling artist from Paris to decorate the bakery sign with
certain scurrilities, and the whole village had conned next morning a list
of the virtues of the Champollion yeast and of the things--mostly
unmentionable--it was warranted _a faire sauter_. There were further
charges and counter-charges--as that the widow's Cochin-China cock had
been found with its neck wrung; and that she, as _sage femme_, and the
only one in Ambialet, had denied her services to Madame Champollion at a
time when humanity should override all private squabbles. Brother Marc
Antoine rubbed his hands and repeatedly smote Zephirine on the flank.

"The pity of it--the treat you are missing!"--but Zephirine snored on,
contemptuous.

After this had lasted, as I say, some ten minutes, Pere Philibert held up
a hand.

"I was about to tell you," said he, "something of this Ambialet of which
you two are citizens. It is a true tale; and if you can pierce to the
instruction it holds for you both, you will go away determined to end this
scandal of our town and live in amity. Shall I proceed?"

Champollion twirled his cap uneasily. The widow fell back a pace, panting
from her onslaught. Neither broke the sudden peace that had fallen on the
orchard.

"Very well! You must know, then, to begin with, that this Ambialet--which
you occupy with your petty broils--was once an important burg with its
charters and liberties, its consul and council of _prud'hommes_ and its
own court of justice. It had its guilds, too--of midwives for instance,
Maman Vacher, who were