"
"Alas!" answered the poor woman, weeping, "with what ease you speak of
this."
"If I were to speak of it with uneasiness, what should I gain? Come, be
reasonable, Jeanne; must _I_ console _you?_" Jeanne wiped away her tears,
and sighed.
"But to return to my affair," said Pique-Vinaigre; "I arrived near Auteuil
in the dusk of the evening. I could go no further; I did not wish to enter
Paris but at night; I seated myself behind a hedge to repose and reflect
upon my plans. From the intensity of my thoughts I fell asleep; a noise of
voices awoke me; it was quite dark; I listened, it was a man and a woman
talking on the road, on the other side of my hedge; the man said to the
woman, 'Who do you think would rob us? have we not left the house alone a
hundred times?' 'Yes,' answered the woman, 'but then we did not leave a
hundred francs in our chest.' 'Who knows it, fool?' said the husband. 'You
are right,' replied the woman, and they passed on. The chance appeared too
favorable for me to lose--there was no danger.
"I waited until they had got a little distance to come out from behind my
hedge; I looked around: at twenty steps off I saw a small cottage; that
must be the house with the hundred francs; there was no other hovel on the
road but this one; Auteuil was five hundred yards off. I said to myself,
'Courage, my old boy, there is no one there, it is night, if there is no
dog (you know I always was afraid of dogs), the affair is done.
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