uld bend an iron bar, or hold back a
carriage drawn by one horse. A Milo of Crotona in the valley, his fame
had spread throughout the department, where all sorts of foolish stories
were current about him, as about all celebrities. It was told how he had
once carried a poor woman and her donkey and her basket on his back to
market; how he had been known to eat a whole ox and drink the fourth
of a hogshead of wine in one day, etc. Gentle as a marriageable
girl, Socquard, who was a stout, short man, with a placid face, broad
shoulders, and a deep chest, where his lungs played like the bellows
of a forge, possessed a flute-like voice, the limpid tones of which
surprised all those who heard them for the first time.

Like Tonsard, whose renown released him from the necessity of giving
proofs of his ferocity, in fact, like all other men who are backed by
public opinion of one kind or another, Socquard never displayed his
extraordinary muscular force unless asked to do so by friends. He now
took the horse as the usurer drew up at the steps of the portico.

"Are you all well at home, Monsieur Rigou?" said the illustrious
innkeeper.

"Pretty well, my good friend," replied Rigou. "Do Plissoud and
Bonnebault and Viollet and Amaury still continue good customers?"

This question, uttered in a tone of good-natured interest, was by no
means one of those empty speeches which superiors are apt to bestow
upon inferiors. In his leisure moments Rigou thought over the smallest
details of "the affair," and Fourchon had already warned him that there
was something suspicious in the intimacy between Plissoud, Bonnebault,
and the brigadier, Viollet.

Bonnebault, in payment of a few francs lost at cards, might very likely
tell the secrets he heard at Tonsard's to Viollet; or he might let them
out over his punch without realizing the importance of such gossip. But
as the information of the old otter man might be instigated by thirst,
Rigou paid no attention except so far as it concerned Plissoud, whose
situation was likely to inspire him with a desire to counteract the
coalition against Les Aigues, if only to get his paws greased by one or
the other of the two parties.

Plissoud combined with his duties of under-sheriff other occupations
which were poorly remunerated, that of agent of insurance (a new form of
enterprise just beginning to show itself in France), agent, also, of a
society providing against the chances of recruitment. His insuff