As the mayor was about to sit down to breakfast, word was brought to him that the rural
policeman, with two prisoners, was awaiting him at the Hotel de Ville. He went there at
once and found old Hochedur standing guard before a middle-class couple whom he was
regarding with a severe expression on his face.
The man, a fat old fellow with a red nose and white hair, seemed utterly dejected; while
the woman, a little roundabout individual with shining cheeks, looked at the official who
had arrested them, with defiant eyes.
"What is it? What is it, Hochedur?"
The rural policeman made his deposition: He had gone out that morning at his usual time,
in order to patrol his beat from the forest of Champioux as far as the boundaries of
Argenteuil. He had not noticed anything unusual in the country except that it was a fine
day, and that the wheat was doing well, when the son of old Bredel, who was going over
his vines, called out to him: "Here, Daddy Hochedur, go and have a look at the outskirts
of the wood. In the first thicket you will find a pair of pigeons who must be a hundred
and thirty years old between them!"
He went in the direction indicated, entered the thicket, and there he heard words which
made him suspect a flagrant breach of morality. Advancing, therefore, on his hands and
knees as if to surprise a poacher, he had arrested the couple whom he found there.
The mayor looked at the culprits in astonishment, for the man was certainly sixty, and the
woman fifty-five at least, and he began to question them, beginning with the man, who
replied in such a weak voice that he could scarcely be heard.
"Haberdasher, in the Rue des Martyrs, in Paris."
"What were you doing in the wood?"
The haberdasher remained silent, with his eyes on his fat paunch, and his hands hanging
at his sides, and the mayor continued:
"Do you deny what the officer of the municipal authorities states?"
