n, Monsieur l'abbe," pleaded Jeanne. "If you
will return in a few days, I shall be able to tell you then what I think
is the best course to take, and we can talk it over together."

By that time they had almost reached the group of children (which the
baron had left, to avoid meeting and speaking to his enemy, the priest)
and the cure went to see what it was that was interesting them so
deeply. It was the dog whelping; five little pups were already crawling
round the mother, who gently licked them as she lay on her side before
the kennel, and just as the cure looked over the children's heads, a
sixth appeared. When they saw it, all the boys and girls clapped their
hands, crying:

"There's another! There's another!"

To them it was simply a perfectly pure and natural amusement, and they
watched these pups being born as they might have watched the apples
falling from a tree.

The Abbe Tolbiac stood still for a moment in horrified surprise, then,
giving way to his passion, he raised his umbrella and began to rain down
blows on the children's heads. The startled urchins ran off as fast as
they could go, and the abbe found himself left alone with the dog, which
was painfully trying to rise. Before she could stand up, he knocked her
back again, and began to hit her with all his strength. The animal
moaned pitifully as she writhed under these blows from which there was
no escape (for she was chained up) and at last the priest's umbrella
broke. Then, unable to beat the dog any longer, he jumped on her, and
stamped and crushed her under-foot in a perfect frenzy of anger. Another
pup was born beneath his feet before he dispatched the mother with a
last furious kick, and then the mangled body lay quivering in the midst
of the whining pups, which were awkwardly groping for their mother's
teats. Jeanne had escaped, but the baron returned and, almost as enraged
as the priest, suddenly seized the abbe by the throat, and giving him a
blow which knocked his hat off, carried him to the fence and threw him
out into the road.

When he turned round, M. le Perthuis saw his daughter kneeling in the
midst of the pups, sobbing as she picked them up and put them in her
skirt. He strode up to her gesticulating wildly.

"There!" he exclaimed. "What do you think of that surpliced wretch,
now?"

The noise had brought the farmpeople to the spot, and they all stood
round, gazing at the remains of the dog.

"Could one have believed that a man