"
"Not yet," muttered Fario. "But I am glad to know what my barrow was
worth."
"Ah, Max, you've found your match!" said a spectator of the scene, who
did not belong to the Order of Idleness.
"Adieu, Monsieur Gilet. I haven't thanked you yet for lending me a
hand," cried the Spaniard, as he kicked the sides of his horse and
disappeared amid loud hurrahs.
"We will keep the tires of the wheels for you," shouted a wheelwright,
who had come to inspect the damage done to the cart.
One of the shafts was sticking upright in the ground, as straight as a
tree. Max stood by, pale and thoughtful, and deeply annoyed by Fario's
speech. For five days after this, nothing was talked of in Issoudun
but the tale of the Spaniard's barrow; it was even fated to travel
abroad, as Goddet remarked,--for it went the round of Berry, where the
speeches of Fario and Max were repeated, and at the end of a week the
affair, greatly to the Spaniard's satisfaction, was still the talk of
the three departments and the subject of endless gossip. In
consequence of the vindictive Spaniard's terrible speech, Max and the
Rabouilleuse became the object of certain comments which were merely
whispered in Issoudun, though they were spoken aloud in Bourges,
Vatan, Vierzon, and Chateauroux. Maxence Gilet knew enough of that
region of the country to guess how envenomed such comments would
become.
"We can't stop their tongues," he said at last.
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