as the thick cabbage soup of the country districts—was already baking in the oven, with its black cherries stuck in the flour like bricks in mortar.
"Is the clafoutis cooking all right?" asked the corporal.
And Catissou shrugged her shoulders as if to say: "Are you foolish? Is your housekeeper in the habit of neglecting her pastry?
II.
"A good Woman," said Martial Tharaud to us a moment afterwards as we passed him with a nod.
He was in the humour for a gossip.
"Yes, yes" (he became loquacious when speaking of Catissou), "she's a good woman; and a sturdy woman, too. To see her make the kettle boil and wash the children—we have three, all boys; see them over there?—nobody would believe she had been on show at the fairs! And yet it's true enough! Oh, it's quite a story! I'll tell you all about it.
"It is about ten years ago I had just left the chasseurs and entered the gendarmerie at Limoges, and that suited me, because I belong to that part. The adjutant told us one morning that there was a splendid capture to be made. A worthy old man named Coussac, a foreman builder, had been murdered in his own house at Montmailler, and there was no clue to the identity of the assassin. That was in September. We had to search the highways and byways; and the adjutant, M. Boudet (he's captain now), told the sergeant, the corporals, and the men to redouble their vigilance and keep their eyes open; and if we met any suspicious-looking persons under the chestnut trees or along the highroads we were to seize them without hesitation and haul them up before the authorities.
"Information had been sent all over the district, and also to Châteauneuf, Ambazac, everywhere, even to Bellac. In a word, the whole department was on the alert.
"Now, it's all very fine to tell you to arrest all suspicious-looking individuals, but you must not always judge by appearances. There are many worthy people who have very evil-looking faces. Why, I knew a man whose looks would have brought him to the guillotine or the galleys; yet he was a man who might have taken a prize for upright conduct! It's true enough! He gave away all he had to the poor—a perfect saint, my word on it! And there are others who look like saints, but who ought to have the handcuffs put on at once.
"We took up hawkers."
"Still, we were told to arrest them; and so we did. We ran in some of those natives of Lorraine who come to Sauviat and Saint-Yrieix to buy china-ware, you know; we took up hawkers, old men, yellow-looking beggars—as yellow as their bags; and we even ran in some silly people who were roaming about without any knowledge of the place. But not one of them was capable
