To let them be happy that day, to leave their feasts free of a death's head, La Boulaye would have withdrawn had he not already been too late.

Duhamel had espied him, and the little, wizened old man came hurrying forward, his horn-rimmed spectacles perched on the very end of his nose, his keen little eyes beaming with delight and welcome.
"Ah, Caron, you are very choicely come," he cried, holding out both hands to La Boulaye.

"You shall embrace our happy Hercules yonder, and wish him joy of the wedded life he has the audacity to exploit." Then, as he espied the crimson ridge across the secretary's countenance, "Mon Dieu!" he exclaimed, "what have you done to yourself, Caron ?" "Pish! It is nothing," answered La Boulaye hurriedly, and would have had the subject dismissed, but that one of the onlooking peasants swore by the memory of some long-dead saint that it was the cut of a whip.
Duhamel's eyes kindled and his parchment-like skin was puckered into a hundred evil wrinkles.
"Who did it, Caron ?" he demanded.
"Since you insist, old master," answered the secretary, still endeavouring to make light of it, "learn that is the lord Marquis's signature to his order of my dismissal from his service." "The dog!" ejaculated the school-master.
"Sh! let it be.

Perhaps I braved him overmuch.

I will tell you of it when these good folks have gone.