"Repairs, monsieur! it's a pitiful sight! They have rebuilt one corner, about as big as your hand, and they didn't even have money enough to put wall-papers on their rooms. The master isn't half so well lodged as I am in your house! It's a depressing place, inside! Heaps of stones in the courtyard to break your legs over, nettles, brambles, no door under a great archway that resembles the entrance to the château of Vincennes and which would be pretty enough if they would give it a coat of plaster of Paris; but all the rest in such a state! Not a wall secure, not a staircase that doesn't shake, cracks big enough to hold a man, ivy that they don't even take the pains to tear down, although it would be easy enough, and rooms that have neither floor nor ceiling! On my word, the people hereabout are genuine Gascons for boasting about their old châteaux, and sending you about on break-neck roads, to find what?--ruins and thistles! Crozant is a stupendous fraud, and Châteaubrun is little better than Crozant!" "So you were not charmed with Crozant either? But my son seemed to like it immensely, I'll be bound?" "Monsieur Emile might very well like it, with such a pretty slip of a girl on his arm! If I had been in his shoes I shouldn't have complained overmuch about the place; but for my part, as I went there hoping to catch a trout and didn't get as much as a gudgeon, I am not very well satisfied with my walk, especially as it is twenty kilometres each way, making four myriameters on foot." "Are you tired, Galuchet?" "Yes, monsieur, very tired and very dissatisfied! they'll never catch me in their Moorish kings' fortress again." And Galuchet, recalling with pride his jest of the morning, repeated complacently and with a cunning smile: "Those kings must have cut a curious figure! doubtless they wore clogs and ate with their fingers." "You are very bright to-night, Galuchet," rejoined Monsieur Cardonnet, not deigning to smile; "but, smitten as you are, if you were brighter you would find some pretext for calling on old Châteaubrun from time to time." "I need no pretexts, monsieur," replied Galuchet in an important tone. "I am well acquainted with him; he has often invited me to fish in his stream, and again to-day he urged me to go to breakfast with him some Sunday." "Very well, why don't you go? I am glad to allow you a little recreation from time to time." "You are too kind, monsieur; if you don't need me, I will go next Sunday, for I am very fond of fishing." "Galuchet, my boy, you are an idiot!" "What's that, monsieur?" said Galuchet, disconcerted. "I tell you, my dear fellow, you are an idiot," Cardonnet calmly repeated. "You think of nothing but catching gudgeons, when you might be paying court to a pretty girl."