"Now once when
she told him that the lime-kilns--"
The Judge, who had retraced his steps down the street of the town--it was
little more than a large village, but because it had a court-house and a
marketplace it was called a town--that he might have a good look at
Madame Jean Jacques and her child before he passed them, suddenly said:
"How is it you know so much about it all, Maitre Fille--as to what she
says and of the inner secrets of the household? Ah, ha, my little
Lothario, I have caught you--a bachelor too, with time on his hands,
and the right side of seventy as well! The evidence you have given of a
close knowledge of the household of our Jean Jacques does not have its
basis in hearsay, but in acute personal observation. Tut-tut! Fie-fie!
my little gay Clerk of the Court. Fie! Fie!"
M. Fille was greatly disconcerted. He had never been a Lothario.
In forty years he had never had an episode with one of "the other sex,"
but it was not because he was impervious to the softer emotions. An
intolerable shyness had ever possessed him when in the presence of women,
and even small girl children had frightened him, till he had made friends
with little Zoe Barbille, the daughter of Jean Jacques.
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