"Attendez-moi sur l'orme;
Vous m'attendrez longtemps."
"I don't think he hears me," said Death. "Ho! friend, are you ready?"
"Va-t-en voir s'ils viennent, Jean,
Va-t-en voir s'ils viennent,"
replied the singer.
"Would the brute laugh at me?" said Death to himself.
And he tried to rise.
To his great surprise he could not detach himself from the causeuse. He then understood that he was the sport of a superior power.
"Let us see," he said to Roger. "What will you take to let me go? Do you wish me to prolong your life ten years?"
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"J'ai de bon tabac dans ma tabatière,"
sang the great golfer.
"Will you take twenty years?"
"Il pleut, il pleut, bergère;
Rentre tes blancs moutons."
"Will you take a fifty, wheelwright?—may the devil admire you!"
The wheelwright of Coq intoned:
"Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
A Saint-Malo débarquez sans naufrage."
In the meanwhile the clock of Condé had just struck
[214]
