al,"
the "Quiquendone Impartial," the "Quiquendone Radical," and so
on, written in an inflammatory style, raised the most important
questions.

But what about? you will ask. Apropos of everything, and of
nothing; apropos of the Oudenarde tower, which was falling, and
which some wished to pull down, and others to prop up; apropos of
the police regulations issued by the council, which some
obstinate citizens threatened to resist; apropos of the sweeping
of the gutters, repairing the sewers, and so on. Nor did the
enraged orators confine themselves to the internal administration
of the town. Carried on by the current they went further, and
essayed to plunge their fellow-citizens into the hazards of war.

Quiquendone had had for eight or nine hundred years a _casus
belli_ of the best quality; but she had preciously laid it up
like a relic, and there had seemed some probability that it would
become effete, and no longer serviceable.

This was what had given rise to the _casus belli_.

It is not generally known that Quiquendone, in this cosy corner
of Flanders, lies next to the little town of Virgamen. The
territories of the two communities are contiguous.

Well, in 1185, some time before Count Baldwin's departure to the
Crusades, a Virgamen cow--not a cow belonging to a citizen, but a
cow which was common property, let it be observed--audaciously
ventured to pasture on the territory of Quiquendone. This
unfortunate beast had scarcely eaten three mouthfuls; but the
offence, the abuse, the crime--whatever you will--was committed
and duly indicted, for the magistrates, at that time, had already
begun to know how to write.

"We will take revenge at the proper moment," said simply Natalis
Van Tricasse, the thirty-second predecessor of the burgomaster of
this story, "and the Virgamenians will lose nothing by waiting."

The Virgamenians were forewarned. They waited thinking, without
doubt, that the remembrance of the offence would fade away with
the lapse of time; and really, for several centuries, they lived
on good terms with their neighbours of Quiquendone.

But they counted without their hosts, or rather without this
strange epidemic, which, radically changing the character of the
Quiquendonians, aroused their dormant vengeance.

It was at the club of the Rue Monstrelet that the truculent
orator Schut, abruptly introducing the subject to his hearers,
inflamed them with the expressions and metaphors used on such
oc