In the twinkling of an eye, Blanchet was jealous both of his mistress and his wife. He seized his heavy stick, pulled his hat down over his eyes, like an extinguisher on a candle, and rushed off to the mill, without stopping for breath. Fortunately, the waif was not there. He had gone away to fell and saw up a tree that Blanchet had bought from Blanchard of Guérin, and was not to return till evening. Blanchet would have gone to find him at his work, but he shrank from showing his fury before the young millers of Guérin, lest they should make sport of him for his jealousy, which was unreasonable after his long neglect and contempt of his wife. He would have stayed to wait for his return, but he thought it too wearisome to stay all day at home, and he knew that the quarrel which he wished to pick with his wife could not last long enough to occupy him till evening. It is impossible to be angry very long when the ill-temper is all on one side. In spite of this, however, he could have endured all the derision and the tedium for the pleasure of belaboring the poor waif; but as his walk had cooled him to some degree, he reflected that this cursed waif was no longer a child, and that if he were old enough to think of making love, he was also old enough to defend himself with blows, if provoked. So he tried to gather his wits together, drinking glass after glass in silence, revolving in his brain what he was going to say to his wife, but did not know how to begin. He had said roughly, on entering, that he wished her to listen to something; so she sat near him, as usual sad, silent, and with a tinge of pride in her manner. "Madame Blanchet," said he at last, "I have a command to give you, but if you were the woman you pretend to be, and that you have the reputation of being, you would not wait to be told." There he halted as if to take breath, but the fact is that he was almost ashamed of what he was going to say, for virtue was written on his wife's face as plainly as a prayer in a missal. Madeleine would not help him to explain himself. She did not breathe a word, but waited for him to go on, expecting him to find fault with her for some expenditure, for she had no suspicion of what he was meditating. "You behave as if you did not understand me, Madame Blanchet," continued the miller, "and yet my meaning is clear. You must throw that rubbish out of doors, the sooner the better, for I have had enough and too much of all this sort of thing." "Throw what?" asked Madeleine, in amazement. "Throw what! Then you do not dare to say throw _whom_?" "Good God! no; I know nothing about it," said she. "Speak, if you want me to understand you." "You will make me lose my temper," cried Cadet Blanchet, bellowing like a bull. "I tell you that waif is not wanted in my house, and if he is still here by to-morrow morning, I shall turn him out of doors by main force, unless he prefer to take a turn under my mill-wheel."