Dubourg turned, and his eye fell on his cloak and wig; he divined the source of the peasants' terror, and gave way to a longing to laugh, which he could not control for several minutes. The villagers, hearing his laughter, began to take courage; the fugitives stopped, the women rose and arranged their dresses; everybody looked at Dubourg and awaited an explanation from him. He went back to the shed, took his cloak in one hand and his wig in the other, and returned to the villagers. "Here, my friends, is the beast that seems to have frightened you. I abandon it to your wrath." As he spoke, he threw the cloak and wig on the ground; and the peasants drew near, ventured to touch them, and laughed with Dubourg, saying: "What! is that what it was? Mon Dieu! what a pack of idiots!" At this juncture, Latouche descended from his pear-tree, crying: "I told you that that idiot of a Bertrand, who's as cowardly as a hare, had told us some fool story, and taken a nut-cracker for an ox. Tell me, now, if I wasn't right." "_Morguienne!_" retorted Bertrand; "I don't see but what my nut-cracker gave you a good fright, too; for you climbed that pear-tree like a cat, and knocked Claudine down when you ran by her." "Hush!" said Latouche, turning as red as a beet at Bertrand's retort; "hush, you clown! I only climbed the tree so that I could aim better at what you called an animal." "And you threw your gun away!" "Unintentionally, of course." "Come, come," said Dubourg; "I am the cause of all this confusion; and, in truth, I don't wonder you were frightened when you saw me at a distance in this cloak and wig; the bravest men aren't always eager to fight with a savage beast, and Monsieur Latouche must be very brave to have dared to fire at me." This adroit speech conciliated everybody, and Latouche recovered his good humor. "This stranger expresses himself well," he said; "he is certainly a learned man." Dubourg might easily have passed himself off as a baron again, he had created such a favorable impression; but since the happenings at Chambertin's, he was little inclined to play the nobleman; and when the mayor asked him whence he had come in such an extraordinary costume, he instantly invented a fable of robbers who had attacked and stripped him, stifled his cries with the wig, and wrapped him in the cloak, probably intending to carry him to their cavern, when they had taken alarm at the sound of horses' steps, and had run away, leaving him in the midst of the fields. This tale aroused the deepest interest among the villagers, in Dubourg's favor; they found him very agreeable, having ceased to be afraid of him. The mayor drew up a report, and Latouche observed: