From "Old Dodu"

This is a short fragment from de Nerval's Sylvie (from the chapter called "Old Dodu"):

I was about to reply, I was about to throw myself at her feet and offer her my uncle's house -- which it was still possible for me to purchase, given that there were several of us in line for the inheritance and that the property had remained undivided -- but we were already back at Loisy by now. Dinner was waiting for us. The fine old country smell of onion soup was wafting through the air. Some neighbors had been invited over for this day-after of the festivities. I immediately recognized an ancient woodcutter, Old Dodu, who used to tell us such comic or terrifying tales long into the night. By turns shepherd, messenger, gamekeeper, fisherman and even poacher, Old Dodu whittled cuckoo-clocks and turnspits in his spare time. For many years he had acted as a tour guide in Ermenonville, showing British visitors the spots where Rousseau used to meditate and recounting his final days. It was he who had been the little boy whom the philosopher had employed to keep his herbals in order and whom he instructed to go out and gather the hemlock plants whose juice he extracted and mixed with his cafe au lait. The innkeeper of The Golden Cross contested this latter detail, which set off a long-standing feud. People had long been suspicious of a few innocent secrets Old Dodu possessed, such as healing cows with a spell said backwards and making the sign of the cross with his left foot, but he had quickly given up these superstitions -- thanks to the memory, he said, of his talks with Jean-Jacques.
     'Here you are, little Parisian!' Old Dodu said to me. 'You here to run off with our girls?'
     'Me, Old Dodu?'
     'You take them into the woods while the wolf's away?'
     'Old Dodu, if anybody's the wolf, it's you."
     'Well, I guess I was a wolf as long as I could find myself some lambs, but these days all I ever come across are goats, and they know how to take care of themselves! But you're a wily lot, you Parisians. Jean-Jacques was quite right to say: "Man is corrupted by the poisonous air of cities."'
     'Old Dodu, you know only all too well that man is corrupted everywhere.'