"In that case, and supposing also that you had not the wit to persuade him that such were his orders, our little enterprise is at an end. I have told you that there must be risk. Bah!" she continued, suddenly becoming fierce again, "you do not fear to be a villain, Ignace, provided you may have the profit without the danger. You can creep, but you cannot spring." She did not look unlike a wild-cat herself, with her round black eyes sparkling, her hands making energetic passes in the air. M. Roulleau was in an agony lest any one should hear her imprudent words. "Hush-h-h," he said tremulously, "I am not so clever as you, Zenobie, I do not affirm it. Only tell me what you would have me do." "Do!" she cried in her high-pitched voice. And then, with one of those sudden strange checks by which she controlled her passion, she changed back to her contemptuous manner. "You can never be any thing but what you are, but you may be useful in your own way. Do? Go and creep, Ignace." CHAPTER SIX. _Cori_.--"I have been i' the market place; ... ...all's in anger." _Coriolanus_. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Of all French towns, perhaps Charville is the most under female influence. I do not know how the power has grown up, or whether it is of any great antiquity, but it is so hard to conceive any thing modern in connection with the place, that one supposes it to have existed in remote ages. Women's rights in France are of a more muscular character than in England; women go out into the fields, dig, reap, and plough: it is a severe training, from which they come out brown and weather-beaten. There is plenty of such work in the great monotonous cornfields round Charville all the year round; but inside the town, a more important, and, in their eyes, a more honourable occupation, is intrusted to women. The measuring and selling the grain in the corn-market is carried on by a corporation of their number. They do their work very quickly and efficiently. Their code of laws is of long standing, and seldom meets with a hitch. The owners leave all in their hands; in fact, their trustworthiness is so proverbial, that as soon might the character of a judge be assailed, as the honesty of one of this corporate body. Saturdays are the days when you may see the carts coming in from the farms laden with little golden grain: the Charville sleepiness seems to rouse itself into action; there is activity, energy, sometimes even a little spice of hurry. Those that enter the town at the lower suburb find it no easy matter to get up the narrow steep streets; the carts jolt and creak, the horses labour, while all the time there is an unceasing chorus of the sharp "Heep, heep!"