"Gentlemen," he cried, "it is cutting my finger off!"

A stroke from the landing-net laid the monster at our feet, its strength
all spent. It weighed rather under four pounds. Jupille swore to six.

My learned tutor and I sat down again side by side, but the thread of our
conversation had been broken past mending. I tried to talk of her, but M.
Flamaran insisted on talking of me, of Bourges, of his election as
professor, and of the radically distinct characteristics by which you can
tell the bite of a gudgeon from that of a stickleback.

The latter part of this lecture was, however, purely theoretical, for he
got up two hours before sunset without having hooked a fish.

"A good day, all the same," he said. "It's a good place, and the fish
were biting this morning. We'll come here again some day, Jupille; with
an east wind you ought to catch any quantity of gudgeons." He kept pace
beside me on our way home, but wearied, no doubt, with long sitting, with
the heat, and the glare from the water, fell into a reverie, from which
the incidents of the walk were unable to rouse him.

Jupille trotted before us, carrying his rod in one hand, a
luncheon-basket and a fish-bag in the other. He turned round and gave us
a look at each cross-road, smiled beneath his heavy moustache, and went
on faster than before. I felt sure that something out of the way was
about to happen, and that the silent quill-driver was tasting a quiet
joke.

I had not guessed the whole truth.

At a turn of the road M. Flamaran suddenly pulled up, looked all around
him, and drew a deep breath.

"Hallo, Jupille! My good sir, where are you taking us? If I can believe
my eyes, this is the Chestnut Knoll, down yonder is Plessis Piquet, and
we are two miles from the station and the seven o'clock train!"

There was no denying it. A donkey emerged from the wood, hung with
tassels and bells, carrying in its panniers two little girls, whose
parents toiled behind, goad in hand. The woods had become shrubberies,
through which peeped the thatched roofs of rustic summerhouses, mazes,
artificial waterfalls, grottoes, and ruins; all the dread handiwork of
the rustic decorator burst, superabundant, upon our sight, with shy odors
of beer and cooking. Broken bottles strewed the paths; the bushes all
looked weary, harassed, and overworked; a confused murmur of voices and
crackers floated toward us upon the breeze. I knew full well from these
signs that we were nearin