At the Priory events succeed one another. From the tragic they pass to the comical, for one cannot always shudder. Tired of the captain's mischief-making, and acting on Madame's advice, Monsieur has at last brought suit before a justice of the peace. He claims damages and interest for the breaking of his bell-glasses and his frames, and for the devastation of the garden. It seems that the meeting of the two enemies in the office of the justice was really something epic. They blackguarded one another like rag-pickers. Of course, the captain denies, with many oaths, that he has ever thrown stones or anything else into Lanlaire's garden; it is Lanlaire who throws stones into his. "Have you witnesses? Where are your witnesses? Dare to produce witnesses," screams the captain. "Witnesses?" rejoins Monsieur; "there are the stones, and all the dirty things with which you have been continually covering my land. There are the old hats, and the old slippers, that I pick up every day, and that everybody recognizes as having belonged to you." "You lie." "You are a scoundrel, a drunken rake." But, it being impossible for Monsieur to bring admissible and conclusive testimony, the justice of the peace, who, moreover, is the captain's friend, invites Monsieur to withdraw his complaint. "And for that matter, permit me to say to you," concluded the magistrate, "it is highly improbable, it is quite inadmissible, that a valiant soldier, an intrepid officer, who has won all his stripes on fields of battle, amuses himself in throwing stones and old hats upon your land, like a small boy." "Egad!" vociferates the captain, "this man is an infamous Dreyfusard. He insults the army." "I?" "Yes, you! What you are trying to do, you dirty Jew, is to disgrace the army. Long live the army!" They came near taking each other by the hair, and the justice had much difficulty in separating them. Since then Monsieur has stationed permanently in the garden two invisible witnesses, behind a sort of board shelter, in which are pierced, at the height of a man, four round holes, for the eyes. But the captain, being warned, is lying low, and Monsieur is out the cost of his watchers. I have seen the captain two or three times, over the hedge. In spite of the frost, he stays in his garden all day long, working furiously at all sorts of things. For the moment he is putting oil-paper caps on his rose-bushes. He tells me of his misfortunes. Rose is suffering from an attack of influenza, and then--with her asthma!... Bourbaki is dead. He died of a congestion of the lungs, from drinking too much cognac. Really, the captain has no luck. And surely that bandit of a Lanlaire has cast a spell over him. He wishes to get the upper hand of him, to rid the country of him, and he submits to me an astonishing plan of campaign.