oth and fertile country the muskets flew through
the air to the accompaniment of jeers and laughter such as would have
befitted the inmates of a lunatic asylum out for a holiday.

Loubet, before parting with his, gave it a twirl as a drum-major does
his cane. Lapoulle, observing what all his comrades were doing, must
have supposed the performance to be some recent innovation in the
manual, and followed suit, while Pache, in the confused idea of duty
that he owed to his religious education, refused to do as the rest were
doing and was loaded with obloquy by Chouteau, who called him a priest's
whelp.

"Look at the sniveling papist! And all because his old peasant of a
mother used to make him swallow the holy wafer every Sunday in the
village church down there! Be off with you and go serve mass; a man who
won't stick with his comrades when they are right is a poor-spirited
cur."

Maurice toiled along dejectedly in silence, bowing his head beneath the
blazing sun. At every step he took he seemed to be advancing deeper
into a horrid, phantom-haunted nightmare; it was as if he saw a yawning,
gaping gulf before him toward which he was inevitably tending; it
meant that he was suffering himself to be degraded to the level of the
miserable beings by whom he was surrounded, that he was prostituting his
talents and his position as a man of education.

"Hold!" he said abruptly to Chouteau, "what you say is right; there is
truth in it."

And already he had deposited his musket upon a pile of stones, when
Jean, who had tried without success to check the shameful proceedings of
his men, saw what he was doing and hurried toward him.

"Take up your musket, at once! Do you hear me? take it up at once!"

Jean's face had flushed with sudden anger. Meekest and most pacific of
men, always prone to measures of conciliation, his eyes were now blazing
with wrath, his voice spoke with the thunders of authority. His men had
never before seen him in such a state, and they looked at one another in
astonishment.

"Take up your musket at once, or you will have me to deal with!"

Maurice was quivering with anger; he let fall one single word, into
which he infused all the insult that he had at command:

"Peasant!"

"Yes, that's just it; I am a peasant, while you, you, are a gentleman!
And it is for that reason that you are a pig! Yes! a dirty pig! I make
no bones of telling you of it."

Yells and cat-calls arose all around him, but the co