The
neighbors chattered, but I thought it was all right. At the baptism
of our son, who was called Jacques after my father, to please her, I
squandered all I had economized during my youth, more than three hundred
pistoles, with which I had intended purchasing a meadow that lay in the
midst of our property."
M. Daburon was boiling over with impatience, but he could do nothing.
"Go on, go on," he said every time Lerouge seemed inclined to stop.
"I was well enough pleased," continued the sailor, "until one morning
I saw one of the Count de Commarin's servants entering our house; the
count's chateau is only about a mile from where I lived on the other
side of the town. It was a fellow named Germain whom I didn't like at
all. It was said about the country that he had been mixed up in the
seduction of poor Thomassine, a fine young girl who lived near us; she
appears to have pleased the count, and one day suddenly disappeared. I
asked my wife what the fellow wanted; she replied that he had come to
ask her to take a child to nurse. I would not hear of it at first, for
our means were sufficient to allow Claudine to keep all her milk for
our own child.
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