d heartless, she stammered
out in confusion: "Oh! I wasn't laughing at that. It was Mouton. Do just
look at Mouton, madame."

Then Lisa in her turn began to smile. Mouton, who had been lying all
this time with his nose close to the dish of sausage-meat, had probably
begun to feel distressed and disgusted by the presence of all this food,
for he had risen and was rapidly scratching the table with his paws as
though he wanted to bury the dish and its contents. At last, however,
turning his back to it and lying down on his side, he stretched himself
out, half closing his eyes and rubbing his head against the table with
languid pleasure. Then they all began to compliment Mouton. He never
stole anything, they said, and could be safely left with the meat.
Pauline related that he licked her fingers and washed her face after
dinner without trying to bite her.

However, Lisa now came back to the question as to whether it were
possible to live for three days without food. In her opinion it was not.
"No," she said, "I can't believe it. No one ever goes three days
without food. When people talk of a person dying of hunger, it is a mere
expression. They always get something to eat, more or less. It is only
the most abandoned wretches, people who are utterly lost----"

She was doubtless going to add, "vagrant rogues," but she stopped short
and looked at Florent. The scornful pout of her lips and the expression
of her bright eyes plainly signified that in her belief only villains
made such prolonged fasts. It seemed to her that a man able to remain
without food for three days must necessarily be a very dangerous
character. For, indeed, honest folks never placed themselves in such a
position.

Florent was now almost stifling. In front of him the stove, into which
Leon had just thrown several shovelfuls of coal, was snoring like a lay
clerk asleep in the sun; and the heat was very great. Auguste, who had
taken charge of the lard melting in the pots, was watching over it in a
state of perspiration, and Quenu wiped his brow with his sleeve whilst
waiting for the blood to mix. A drowsiness such as follows gross
feeding, an atmosphere heavy with indigestion, pervaded the kitchen.

"When the man had buried his comrade in the sand," Florent continued
slowly, "he walked off alone straight in front of him. Dutch Guiana, in
which country he now was, is a land of forests intermingled with rivers
and swamps. The man walked on for more than a