Malandain, standing in his doorway, began to laugh when he saw him
coming. Why?
He accosted a farmer from Criquetot, who did not let him finish, but
poked him in the pit of his stomach, and shouted in his face: "Go on,
you old fox!" Then he turned on his heel.
Master Hauchecorne was speechless, and more and more disturbed. Why
did he call him "old fox"?
When he was seated at the table, in Jourdain's Inn, he set about
explaining the affair once more.
A horse-trader from Montvilliers called out to him:--
"Nonsense, nonsense, you old dodger! I know all about your string!"
"But they've found the wallet!" faltered Hauchecorne.
"None of that, old boy; there's one who finds it, and there's one who
carries it back. I don't know just how you did it, but I understand
you."
The peasant was fairly stunned. He understood at last. He was accused
of having sent the wallet back by a confederate, an accomplice.
He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh.
He could not finish his dinner, but left the inn amid a chorus of
jeers.
He returned home, shamefaced and indignant, suffocated by wrath, by
confusion, and all the more cast down because, with his Norman
cunning, he was quite capable of doing the thing with which he was
charged, and even of boasting of it as a shrewd trick. He had a
confused idea that his innocence was impossible to establish, his
craftiness being so well known.
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