for a young and pretty boy like Monsieur Georges. And really, when I think of the matter again, and realize that she never suspected anything, that she never saw anything, that she never understood anything, this seems to me the most astonishing feature of the matter. Ah! one can say it now; they were not very sharp, the three of them. They had an abundance of confidence.
I have seen Captain Mauger again, over the hedge. Crouching before a freshly-dug bed, he was transplanting pansies and gilly-flowers. As soon as he saw me, he left his work, and came to the hedge to talk. He is no longer angry with me for the murder of his ferret. He even seems very gay. Bursting with laughter, he confides to me that this morning he has wrung the neck of the Lanlaires' white cat. Probably the cat avenges the ferret.
"It is the tenth that I have gently killed for them," he cries, with ferocious joy, slapping his thigh, and then rubbing his grimy hands. "Ah! the dirty thing will scratch no more compost from my garden-frames; it will no longer ravage my seed-plots, the camel! And, if I could also wring the necks of your Lanlaire and his female! Oh! the pigs! Oh! oh! oh! that's an idea."
This idea makes him twist with laughter for a moment. And suddenly, his eyes sparkling with a stealthy malice, he asks:
