ves with pushing
with their feet combatants who came under their table. Two others,
rather than take part in this disturbance, buried their hands in their
pockets; and another two jumped upon the table they occupied, as people
do to avoid being submerged by overflowing water.

"Come, come," said D'Artagnan to himself, not having lost one of the
details we have related, "this is a very fair gathering--circumspect,
calm, accustomed to disturbance, acquainted with blows! Peste! I have
been lucky."

All at once his attention was called to a particular part of the room.
The two men who had pushed the strugglers with their feet were assailed
with abuse by the sailors, who had become reconciled. One of them,
half drunk with passion, and quite drunk with beer, came, in a menacing
manner, to demand of the shorter of these two sages by what right he had
touched with his foot creatures of the good God, who were not dogs.
And whilst putting this question, in order to make it more direct, he
applied his great fist to the nose of D'Artagnan's recruit.

This man became pale, without its being to be discerned whether his
pallor arose from anger or from fear; seeing which, the sailor concluded
it was from fear, and raised his fist with the manifest intention of
letting it fall upon the head of the stranger. But though the threatened
man did not appear to move, he dealt the sailor such a severe blow in
the stomach that he sent him rolling and howling to the other side of
the room. At the same instant, rallied by the esprit de corps, all the
comrades of the conquered man fell upon the conqueror.

The latter, with the same coolness of which he had given proof, without
committing the imprudence of touching his weapons, took up a beer-pot
with a pewter-lid, and knocked down two or three of his assailants;
then, as he was about to yield to numbers, the seven other silent men
at the tables, who had not stirred, perceived that their cause was at
stake, and came to the rescue. At the same time, the two indifferent
spectators at the door turned round with frowning brows, indicating
their evident intention of taking the enemy in the rear, if the enemy
did not cease their aggressions.

The host, his helpers, and two watchmen who were passing, and who from
curiosity had penetrated too far into the room, were mixed up in the
tumult and showered with blows. The Parisians hit like Cyclops, with an
ensemble and a tactic delightful to behold. At len