“Yes, you, surely you remember one evening when I fell asleep in the garden, and you came and picked me up, but dropped me like a hot potato?” “Belette,” said I earnestly, “let me tell you all about it.” “Don’t trouble yourself,” said she, “but how if it were to do over again?” “I think that I should do just the same.” “What a mutton-head it is!” cried she. “But on my soul! I believe that is the reason why I loved you,--still I thought I would have some fun with you, after that; you deserved to suffer a little, and who could have thought that you would be fool enough to go away from the hook, instead of swallowing it?” “Much obliged!” said I; “but hooks have sharp points to them.” She laughed, and looked at me in the old way under her lashes. “Well, when I heard of your fight with that other blockhead, whose name I have forgotten, (I was down by the river washing my clothes, when I heard some one say that he was tearing you to pieces), I dropped the basket and let everything float away in the water, and ran off just as I was in my bare feet, trampling on everybody in my way. I was all out of breath, but I wanted to call out that I loved you, that I could not bear to have that great brute bite you to pieces, that I wanted a whole husband not the remains of one;--but when I got there the fight was over, and my fine gentlemen were guzzling in the tavern, on the best of terms. Then the lamb and the wolf ran away together, leaving me in such a fury! It seems ridiculous now when I look at you, but at that moment I should have liked to tear the skin off your back; and since I could not get at you to punish you, I punished myself. In my rage I took up with the first man who came along;--the miller. Revenge is sweet, but I swear that it was you that I thought of all the time when----” “I know what you mean,” said I. “Well,” she continued, “I kept thinking that I hoped Breugnon’s ears would burn when he heard it, that it served him right, that I wished that he would come back now; and you did come back, rather sooner than I intended and,--you know what happened, so there I was, tied for life to my donkey, and here we are both of us.” After a pause I said, “I hope at least that you get on pretty well with him?” “About as well as he does with me,” she answered, with a shrug of her shoulders. I could not help saying, “Your home must be Paradise.” “You’ve hit the mark,” said she, laughing.