"Well," said José, "it happened that my late father, brave as he was, was in such a devil of a funk that the sweat was hanging from the end of his nose like a head of oats. There he was, the dear man, with his eyes bigger than his head, never daring to budge. Presently he thought he heard behind him the 'tic tac,' 'tic tac,' which he had already heard several times on the journey; but he had too much to occupy his attention in front of him to pay much heed to what might pass behind. Suddenly, when he was least expecting it, he felt two great bony hands, like the claws of a bear, grip him by the shoulders. He turned around horrified, and found himself face to face with La Corriveau, who was climbing on his back. She had thrust her hands through the bars of her cage and succeeded in clutching him; but the cage was heavy, and at every leap she fell back again to the ground with a hoarse cry, without losing her hold, however, on the shoulders of my late father, who bent under the burden. If he had not held tight to the fence with both hands, he would have been crushed under the weight. My poor late father was so overwhelmed with horror that one might have heard the sweat that rolled off his forehead dropping down on the fence like grains of duck-shot. "'My dear Francis,' said La Corriveau, 'do me the pleasure of taking me to dance with my friends of Isle d'Orléans?' "'Oh, you devil's wench!' cried my late father. That was the only oath the good man ever used, and that only when very much tried." "The deuce!" exclaimed Jules, "it seems to me that the occasion was a very suitable one. For my own part, I should have been swearing like a heathen." "And I," said Archie, "like an Englishman." "Isn't that much the same thing," answered D'Haberville. "You are wrong, my dear Jules. I must acknowledge that the heathen acquit themselves very well; but the English? Oh, my! Le Roux who, soon as he got out of college, made a point of reading all the bad books he could get hold of, told us, if you remember, that that blackguard of a Voltaire, as my uncle the Jesuit used to call him, had declared in a book of his, treating of what happened in France in the reign of Charles VII, when that prince was hunting the islanders out of his kingdom--Le Roux told us that Voltaire had put it on record that 'every Englishman swears.' Well, my boy, those events took place about the year 1445--let us say, three hundred years ago. Judge, then, what dreadful oaths that ill-tempered nation must have invented in the course of three centuries!" "I surrender," said Jules. "But go on, my dear José."