Frank L Packard

The Beloved Traitor Frank L Packard

It was a wilder gust than any that had gone before. It tore along the beach with maniacal fury; and, shrieking in a high, devilishly-gleeful falsetto, while the joints of the little inn, rheumatic with age, squeaked in its embrace, shook the Taverne du Bas Rhône much after the fashion of a terrier shaking a rat. And with that gust, loosening the dilapidated fastening on the casement, a window crashed inward, shattering the pane against the wall. "Sacré bleu!" shouted a man, springing smartly to his feet from his seat at a small table as the rain lashed him. "What a dog of a night!" Against the opposite wall, tilted back in a chair, Papa Fregeau, the patron, a rotund, aproned little individual, stopped the humming of his song. "Tiens!" said he fatuously. "But it is worse than that, Alcide, since it is bad for business- hah! Not a franc profit to-night-the Bas Rhône is desolated." And he resumed his song: "In Languedoc, where the wine flows free, We drink to--" "Hold your bibulous tongue, Jacques Fregeau, and get something with which to fix that window before we are as wet inside as you!"-it was Madame Fregeau, stout, middle-aged and rosy, already hurrying to the aid of the first speaker, who was wrestling with the dismantled fastening.