who are friends, send a squadron of cavalry the peasants can't fight.
They might at a pinch get the better of the gendarmes, but as for
resisting a charge of cavalry!--"

"Sibilet heard him say something much more dangerous than that," said
Rigou; "and that's what brings me here."

"Oh, my poor Sophie!" cried Madame Soudry, sentimentally, alluding to
her _friend_, Mademoiselle Laguerre, "into what hands Les Aigues has
fallen! This is what we have gained by the Revolution!--a parcel of
swaggering epaulets! We might have foreseen that whenever the bottle
was turned upside down the dregs would spoil the wine!"

"He means to go to Paris and cabal with the Keeper of the Seals and
others to get the whole judiciary changed down here," said Rigou.

"Ha!" cried Lupin, "then he sees his danger."

"If they appoint my son-in-law attorney-general we can't help
ourselves; the general will get him replaced by some Parisian devoted
to his interests," continued Rigou. "If he gets a place in Paris for
Gendrin and makes Guerbet chief-justice of the court at Auxerre, he'll
knock down our skittles! The gendarmerie is on his side now, and if he
gets the courts as well, and keeps such advisers as the abbe and
Michaud we sha'n't dance at the wedding; he'll play us some scurvy
trick or other."

"How is it that in all these five years you have never managed to get
rid of that abbe?" said Lupin.