"Poor, dear father! How prettily he plays at blind-man's buff with his own little boy," said Tortillard, grinning, and enjoying the ease with which he escaped from the impotent attempts of the Schoolmaster to seize him, who, though impelled to the exertion by his overboiling rage, was soon compelled to cease, and, as had been the case before, to give up all hopes of inflicting the revenge he yearned to bestow on the impish son of Bras Rouge. Thus compelled to submit to the impudent persecution of his juvenile tormentor, and await the propitious hour when all his injuries could safely be avenged, the brigand determined to reserve his powerless wrath for a fitting opportunity of paying off old scores, and, worn out in body by his futile violence, threw himself, swearing and cursing, on the bed. "Dear father!--sweet father!--have you got the toothache that you swear so? Ah, if Monsieur le Curé heard you, what would he say to you? He would give you such penance! Oh, my!" "That's right!--go on!" replied the ruffian, in a hollow and suppressed voice, after long enduring this entertaining vivacity on the part of the young gentleman. "Laugh at me!--mock me!--make sport of my calamity, cowardly scoundrel that you are! That is a fine, noble action, is it not? Just worthy of such a mean, ignoble, contemptible soul as dwells within that wretched, crooked body!" "Oh, how fine we talk! How nice we preach about being generous, and all that, don't we?" cried Tortillard, bursting into peals of laughter. "I beg your pardon, dear father, but I can't possibly help thinking it so funny to hear you, whose fingers were regular fish-hooks, picking and stealing whatever came in their way; and, as for generosity, I beg you don't mention it, because, till you got your eyes poked out I don't suppose you ever thought of such a word!" "But, at least, I never did you any harm. Why, then, torment me thus?" "Because, in the first place, you said what I did not like to the Chouette; then you had a fancy for stopping and playing the fool among the clodhoppers here. Perhaps you mean to commence a course of asses' milk?" "You impudent young beggar! If I had only had the opportunity of remaining at this farm--which I now wish sunk in the bottomless pit, or blasted with eternal lightning--you should not have played your tricks of devilish cruelty with me any longer!" "You to remain here! that would be a farce! Who, then, would Madame la Chouette have for her _bête de souffrance_? Me, perhaps, thank ye!--don't you wish you may get it?" "Miserable abortion!"