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 landed estate round a castle fit for a prince would condescend to such nonsense! Get up then, you lie there like a limp rag!”

“I do not know what monsieur means,” replied Minoret at last, in his diminutive voice, the trembling of which was all the more noticeable on account of its shrillness. “What reason should I have to persecute that little girl? I may have told Goupil how vexed I was to see her in Nemours; my son Désiré was in love with her, and I did not at all like her as a wife for him, that is all.”

“Goupil has told me all, Monsieur Minoret.”

There was a moment of awful silence, in which the three scrutinized each other. Zélie had seen the nervous working of her giant’s fat face.

“Although you are nothing but insects, I intend wreaking the most fearful vengeance upon you, and I know how to do it,” pursued the nobleman. “It is not from you, a man of sixty-seven, that I shall demand satisfaction for the insults offered to Mademoiselle Mirouët, but from your son. The first time that Monsieur Minoret junior sets foot in Nemours, we shall meet; he will have to fight with me, and he will fight! or else he will be so disgraced, that he will never show his face anywhere again; if he does not come to Nemours I shall go to Fontainebleau, I will! I will get some satisfaction. It shall not be said that you were allowed to make a cowardly attempt to dishonor a defenceless young girl.”

“But Goupil’s accusations—are—not—” said Minoret.