Page:Ninety-three.djvu/259

 berries had been eaten, René-Jean looked at it with a terrible longing, and Georgette, whose eyes followed her brother's, noticed the engraving and said, "Pickshur."

This word seemed to determine René-Jean. Then, to the great amazement of Gros-Alain, he did an extraordinary thing.

A great oak chair stood in a corner of the library; René-Jean walked to this chair, seized it and dragged it all by himself to the desk. Then when the chair touched the desk, he got up on it and placed his two hands on the book.

Having reached this height, he felt that it was necessary to be, generous; he took the "pickshur" by the upper corner and carefully tore it out; Saint Bartholomew's picture tore crosswise, but that was not René-Jean's fault; he left all the left side, with one eye and a little of the old apocryphal evangelist's halo, in the book, and offered the other half of the saint, and all his skin, to Georgette. Georgette took the saint and said,—

"Mummum."

"Give me one!" cried Gros-Alain.

The first torn page is like the first drop of blood shed. It decides slaughter.

René-Jean turned the leaf; after the saint came the commentator Pantœnus; René-Jean bestowed Pantœnus on Gros-Alain.

In the meantime, Georgette tore her large piece into two small ones, then the two small ones into four; so that history might say, that after having been flayed in Armenia, Saint-Bartholomew was quartered in Brittany.