Gabrielle looked towards the corporal; he was standing near the window, with his back to the table on which the mother-of-pearl coffer lay, and was engaged in animated conversation with Percenez, Madame, and Madeleine. Gabrielle observed that the old soldier made a point of addressing his wife and daughter-in-law in turn, and then directing an observation to Percenez. From sentences she caught, the girl ascertained that the corporal was attacking the French character, and was especially caustic on the subject of French women. His wife was at once in a blaze, and Madeleine caught fire. Percenez took up cudgels on behalf of his countrywomen, but the soldier was not to be beaten by the three combined. As soon as the conversation or argument gave symptoms of flagging, he produced from his armoury some peculiarly pungent remark, which he cast as a bomb-shell among them, and which at once aroused a clatter of tongues. ‘There’s a story told in my country of a man who married a Frenchwoman,’ said the soldier, fixing his wife with his eye. ‘I will not listen to your stories,’ said Madame Deschwanden; ‘they are bad, wicked tales. Stop your ears, Percenez, as I stop mine. Madeleine, don’t listen to him. A Frenchman uses his tongue like a feather, but a German or Swiss knocks you down with it like a club.’ ‘There is a story in my country,’ pursued the corporal, turning composedly towards the colporteur, ‘of a Swiss farmer who married a French mademoiselle.’ ‘Ah! I pity her, poor thing, I do,’ said Madame Deschwanden, suddenly removing her hand from her ear and fluttering it in her husband’s face; ‘she doubtless thought him flesh and blood, and only too late found him out to be a Jacquemart--a wooden doll worked by springs.’ ‘So!’ continued the soldier, calmly, ‘the man died----’ ‘Of dry rot,’ interpolated madame; ‘there was a maggot in his head.’ ‘He died,’ the soldier pursued; ‘and then, having left the earth, he presented himself at the gates of Paradise.’ ‘Ah!’ exclaimed madame; ‘and he found that it was peopled with Bruder Klauses--like the wooden saints your boy carves.’ ‘Now you know, Percenez, my good friend, that there is a preliminary stage souls have to pass through before they can enter the realm of the blessed; that stage is called purgatory. So! S. Peter opened the door to the Swiss Bauer and said, “You cannot come in. You have not been in purgatory!” “No,” answered the farmer, “but I have spent ten years married to a French wife.” “Then step in,” said the door-keeper, “you have endured purgatory in life.”’ ‘I will not listen to you,’ screamed Madame Deschwanden, resolutely facing the window and presenting her back to her husband. Madeleine followed suit, and was immediately engrossed in what was taking place in the street.