“Look where,” asked Thibault.
“Look at the spot where I was,” said the wolf. Thibault drew back in horror. The place where the wolf had been lying was empty; the wolf had disappeared, where or how it was impossible to say. The room was intact, there was not a hole in the roof large enough to let a needle through, nor a crack in the floor through which a drop of water could have filtered.
“Well, do you still think that I require your assistance to get out of trouble,” said the wolf.
“Where the devil are you?”
“If you put a question to me in my real name,” said the wolf with a sneer in his voice, “I shall be obliged to answer you. I am still in the same place.”
“But I can no longer see you!”
“Simply because I am invisible.”
“But the dogs, the huntsmen, the Baron, will come in here after you?”
“No doubt they will, but they will not find me.”
“But if they do not find you, they will set upon me.”
“As they did yesterday; only yesterday you were sentenced to thirty-six strokes of the strap, for having carried off the buck; today, you will be sentenced to seventy-two, for having hidden the wolf, and Agnelette will not be on the spot to buy you off with a kiss.”
“Phew! what am I to do?”
“Let the buck loose; the dogs will mistake the scent, and they will get the blows instead of you.”