with their fists and fight
it out and not involve in their row some hundreds of thousands of men
who don't even know one another by sight and have not the slightest
desire to fight."

The whole car laughed and applauded, and Lapoulle, who did not know who
Badinguet[*] was, and could not have told whether it was a king or an
emperor in whose cause he was fighting, repeated like the gigantic baby
that he was:

[*] Napoleon III.

"Of course, let 'em fight it out, and take a drink together afterward."

But Chouteau had turned to Pache, whom he now proceeded to take in hand.

"You are in the same boat, you, who pretend to believe in the good God.
He has forbidden men to fight, your good God has. Why, then, are you
here, you great simpleton?"

"_Dame_!" Pache doubtfully replied, "it is not for any pleasure of mine
that I am here--but the gendarmes--"

"Oh, indeed, the gendarmes! let the gendarmes go milk the ducks!--say,
do you know what we would do, all of us, if we had the least bit of
spirit? I'll tell you; just the minute that they land us from the cars
we'd skip; yes, we'd go straight home, and leave that pig of a Badinguet
and his gang of two-for-a-penny generals to settle accounts with their
beastly Prussians as best they may!"

There was a storm of bravos; the leaven of perversion was doing its work
and it was Chouteau's hour of triumph, airing his muddled theories and
ringing the changes on the Republic, the Rights of Man, the rottenness
of the Empire, which must be destroyed, and the treason of their
commanders, who, as it had been proved, had sold themselves to the enemy
at the rate of a million a piece. _He_ was a revolutionist, he boldly
declared; the others could not even say that they were republicans, did
not know what their opinions were, in fact, except Loubet, the concocter
of stews and hashes, and _he_ had an opinion, for he had been for soup,
first, last, and always; but they all, carried away by his eloquence,
shouted none the less lustily against the Emperor, their officers, the
whole d----d shop, which they would leave the first chance they got,
see if they wouldn't! And Chouteau, while fanning the flame of their
discontent, kept an eye on Maurice, the fine gentleman, who appeared
interested and whom he was proud to have for a companion; so that, by
way of inflaming _his_ passions also, it occurred to him to make
an attack on Jean, who had thus far been tranquilly watching the
proceedings ou