"Captain Phoebus, you are a happy gendarme!"
The archdeacon heard the whole of this conversation. His teeth chattered; a visible shiver ran through his whole body. He halted for a moment, leaned against a post like a drunken man, then followed the two merry knaves.
At the moment when he overtook them once more, they had changed their conversation. He heard them singing at the top of their lungs the ancient refrain,-~Les enfants des Petits-Carreaux Se font pendre cornme des veaux~*.
* The children of the Petits Carreaux let themselves be hung like calves.