ambition was to succeed her father at
the Grand-I-Vert. He made use of all his craftiness and all his actual
powers to capture her; he promised her wealth, he also promised her the
license her mother had enjoyed; besides this, he offered his prospective
father-in-law an enormous rental, five hundred francs a year, for his
inn, until he could buy him out, trusting to an agreement he had made
with Monsieur Brunet to pay these costs by notes on stamped paper. By
trade a journeyman tool-maker, this gnome worked for the wheelwrights
when work was plentiful, but he also hired himself out for any extra
labor which was well paid. Though he possessed, unknown to the whole
neighborhood, eighteen hundred francs now in Gaubertin's hands, he lived
like a beggar, slept in a barn, and gleaned at the harvests. He wore
Gaubertin's receipt for his money sewn into the waist-belt of his
trousers,--having it renewed every year with its own added interest and
the amount of his savings.

"Hey! what do I care," cried Nicolas, replying to Godain's prudent
advice not to talk before Niseron. "If I'm doomed to be a soldier
I'd rather the sawdust of the basket sucked up my blood than have it
dribbled out drop by drop in the battles. I'll deliver this country of
at least one of those Arminacs that the devil has launched upon us."

And he related what he called Michaud's plot against him, which Marie
and Bonnebault had overheard.

"Where do you expect France to find soldiers?" said the white-haired
old man, rising and standing before Nicolas during the silence which
followed the utterance of this threat.

"We serve our time and come home again," remarked Bonnebault, twirling
his moustache.

Observing that all the worst characters of the neighborhood were
collecting, Pere Niseron shook his head and left the tavern, after
offering a farthing to Madame Tonsard in payment for his glass of wine.
When the worthy man had gone down the steps a movement of relief and
satisfaction passed through the assembled drinkers which would have told
whoever watched them that each man in that company felt he was rid of
the living image of his own conscience.

"Well, what do you say to all that, hey, Courtecuisse?" asked Vaudoyer,
who had just come in, and to whom Tonsard had related Vatel's attempt.

Courtecuisse clacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and set
his glass on the table.

"Vatel put himself in the wrong," he said. "If I were Mother Tonsar