Jean-Paul adored animals, and having a heart in proportion as big as his strong body, he hated cowardly abuse. His first impulse was to strike Pierre a ringing blow, seize the rabbit, and rush off with it. He chose another course. "Is it really yours, the rabbit?" he said, very fast and in a low tone, to the little boy who stood by his side watching the fun with big eyes. "Yes, really mine. I am to have a sou." "Will you sell him for ten?" The boy gasped. Ten sous! He had never in his ragged existence owned ten sous. "Quick," said Jean-Paul, rattling the money before his eyes. To be master of ten sous, and to have at the same time a gingerbread fair at his very side was too great a stroke of fortune for the little peasant to grasp. "I should think so!" he said. "There, then." Jean-Paul crowded the pennies into the boy's hand, leaned forward, and picked up the little rabbit by the ears, and lifted it over the heads of the group. "See here!" exclaimed Pierre, angrily, "you are a little too fresh, my fine fellow!" and he sprang to his feet and confronted Jean-Paul. "It is my rabbit, Pierre Fouget," replied the other, whose eyes, though calm, were dangerous. "I have just bought him for ten sous." "Yes," nodded his former owner, "that is so; and give me my sou for the sport, Pierre." Pierre measured the straight figure of Jean-Paul. He looked at his broad chest, and at the big hand that held the panting beast tenderly. Jean-Paul stood quite still and looked back at him. Then Pierre laughed sneeringly, and shrugging his shoulders, "My word, if the monsieur has a fancy to collect animals, and can pay for them, it is his own affair," he said, and turned away. The little boy of the ten sous, his hands full of cakes, was swinging in the merry-go-round. He waved his hand to Jean-Paul as he passed. "I shall ride twice more, Jean-Paul," he said. This is how Jean-Paul bought his rabbit at the Gingerbread Fair. * * * * * Monsieur le Maire was a very important person. I shall not tell about his duties, or all that he did in the little white Mayory over the post-office. Dear me, that would be dry reading! After one had climbed the steep cliff straight up from the village, and walked three kilometres or more, all the fertile farm-lands, and those forests with the green-trunked trees, and the white château with its high gables belonged to M. le Maire. His ancestors had been royalists, and fought for and served many kings and princes. But M. le Maire of Freport was a good republican, and he used to say he belonged to the people, which, of course, pleased them very much indeed; and those of the town who loved the days of the Emperor loved M. le Maire for his ancestry, and the rest honored him as a good servant of the republic.