“And who recommended that remedy? was it Monsieur Lécosse?” Monsieur Lécosse was the doctor in repute at Villers-Cotterets.
“Monsieur Lécosse?” exclaimed Mocquet. “No, indeed! What should he know about spells! By my faith, no! it was not Monsieur Lécosse.”
“Who was it, then?”
“It was the shepherd of Longpré.”
“But a bowl of wine, you dunderhead! Why, you must have been dead drunk.”
“The shepherd drank half of it.”
“I see; now I understand why he prescribed it. And did the bowl of wine have any effect?”
“Not any, General; she came trampling over my chest that night, just as if I had taken nothing.”
“And what did you do next? You were not obliged, I suppose, to limit your efforts to your bowl of hot wine?”
“I did what I do when I want to catch a wily beast .”
Mocquet made use of a phraseology which was all his own; no one had ever succeeded in inducing him to say a wild beast ; every time my father said wild beast , Mocquet would answer, “Yes, General, I know, a wily beast .”
“You still stick to your wily beast , then?” my father said to him on one occasion.
“Yes, General, but not out of obstinacy.”
“And why then, may I ask?”