gar, eggs,
and a little beer and water,--that couldn't get into my head! No!
There is something that I cannot explain, and as, after all, I am
responsible for the conduct of the citizens, I will have an
investigation."

But the investigation, though decided upon by the municipal
council, produced no result. If the facts were clear, the causes
escaped the sagacity of the magistrates. Besides, tranquillity
had been restored in the public mind, and with tranquillity,
forgetfulness of the strange scenes of the theatre. The
newspapers avoided speaking of them, and the account of the
performance which appeared in the "Quiquendone Memorial," made no
allusion to this intoxication of the entire audience.

Meanwhile, though the town resumed its habitual phlegm, and
became apparently Flemish as before, it was observable that, at
bottom, the character and temperament of the people changed
little by little. One might have truly said, with Dominique
Custos, the doctor, that "their nerves were affected."

Let us explain. This undoubted change only took place under
certain conditions. When the Quiquendonians passed through the
streets of the town, walked in the squares or along the Vaar,
they were always the cold and methodical people of former days.
So, too, when they remained at home, some working with their
hands and others with their heads,--these doing nothing, those
thinking nothing,--their private life was silent, inert,
vegetating as before. No quarrels, no household squabbles, no
acceleration in the beating of the heart, no excitement of the
brain. The mean of their pulsations remained as it was of old,
from fifty to fifty-two per minute.

But, strange and inexplicable phenomenon though it was, which
would have defied the sagacity of the most ingenious physiologists
of the day, if the inhabitants of Quiquendone did not change in
their home life, they were visibly changed in their civil life
and in their relations between man and man, to which it leads.

If they met together in some public edifice, it did not "work
well," as Commissary Passauf expressed it. On 'change, at the
town-hall, in the amphitheatre of the academy, at the sessions of
the council, as well as at the reunions of the _savants_, a
strange excitement seized the assembled citizens. Their relations
with each other became embarrassing before they had been together
an hour. In two hours the discussion degenerated into an angry
dispute. Heads became heated