"A great lady who has her carriages and footmen in livery is a conquest to boast of! While a country girl, who has only her virtue--" She lowered her eyes with an air of affected modesty, and did not finish her sentence.
"A virtue which grants a rendezvous at the end of three days' acquaintance, and in the depths of the woods! That is amusing!" thought the artist.
"Still, you will not be the first of the fine lady's lovers," she continued, raising her head and trying to conceal her vexation under an ironical air.
"These are falsehoods." "Falsehoods, when I tell you that I know what I am speaking about! Lambernier is not a liar." "Lambernier is not a liar ?" repeated a harsh, hoarse voice, which seemed to come from the cavity of the tree under which they were seated.

"Who has said that Lambernier was a liar ?" At the same moment, the carpenter in person suddenly appeared upon the scene.

He stood before the amazed pair with his brown coat thrown over his shoulders, as usual, and his broad-brimmed gray hat pulled down over his ears, gazing at them with his deep, ugly eyes and a sardonic laugh escaping from his lips.
Mademoiselle Reine uttered a shriek as if she had seen Satan rise up from the ground at her feet; Marillac rose with a bound and seized his whip.
"You are a very insolent fellow," said he, in his ringing bass voice.
"Go your way!" "I receive no such orders," replied the workman, in a tone which justified the epithet which had just been bestowed upon him; "we are upon public ground, and I have a right to be here as well as you." "If you do not take to your heels at once," said the artist, becoming purple with rage, "I will cut your face in two." "Apples are sometimes cut in two," said Lambernier, sneeringly advancing his face with an air of bravado.

"My face is not afraid of your whip; you can not frighten me because you are a gentleman and I am a workman! I snap my fingers at bourgeois like--" This time he did not have time to finish his comparison; a blow from the whip cut him in the face and made him reel in spite of himself.
"By heaven!" he exclaimed, in a voice like thunder, "may I lose my name if I do not polish you off well!" He threw his coat on the grass, spat, in his hands and rubbed them together, assuming the position of an athlete ready for a boxing-bout.
Mademoiselle Gobillot, arose, trembling with fright at this demonstration, and uttered two or three inarticulate cries; but, instead of throwing herself between the combatants in the approved style, she ran away as fast as she could.
Although the weapons of the adversaries were not of a nature to spill blood upon the turf, there was something warlike about their countenances which would have done honor to ancient paladins.

Lambernier squatting upon his legs, according to the rules of pugilism, and with his fists on a level with his shoulders, resembled, somewhat, a cat ready to bound upon its prey.