"How is Madame Mathieu?"
"Quite well, thank you."
So the young woman with the large, tender eyes, whom we had just seen, was the wife of this repugnant and brutal rustic, whose jealousy seemed to emphasise his physical ugliness.
Slamming the door behind him, the innkeeper left the room. Mother Angenoux was still standing, leaning on her stick, the cat at her feet.
"You've been ill, Mother Angenoux?—Is that why we have not seen you for the last week?" asked the Green Man.
"Yes, Monsieur keeper. I have been able to get up but three times, to go to pray to Sainte-Geneviève, our good patroness, and the rest of the time I have been lying on my bed. There was no one to care for me but the Bête du bon Dieu!"
"Did she not leave you?"
"Neither by day nor by night."
"Are you sure of that?"
"As I am of Paradise."
"Then how was it, Madame Angenoux, that all through the night of the murder nothing but the cry of the Bête du bon Dieu was heard?"
Mother Angenoux planted herself in front of the forest-keeper and struck the floor with her stick.
"I don't know anything about it," she said. "But shall I tell you something? There are no two cats in the world that cry like that. Well, on the night of the murder I also heard the cry of the Bête du bon Dieu outside; and yet she was on my knees, and did not mew once, I swear. I crossed
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