resent me. In the end I should
be fined for furious driving--at the rate, when the accident happened,
of a mile an hour--and probably have to pay a heavy compensation to the
wilful and uninjured victim of McKeogh's impeccable driving. And all the
time, while waiting for injustice to take its course, I should be the
guest of a hostile population. I grew angry. The crowd grew angrier. The
gendarmes approached with an air of majesty and fate. But just before
they could be acquainted with the brutal facts of the disaster a
singularly bright-eyed man, wearing a hard felt hat and a blue serge
suit, flashed like a meteor into the midst of the throng, glanced with
an amazing swiftness at me, the car, the crowd, the gendarmes and the
victim, ran his hands up and down the person of the last mentioned, and
then, with a frenzied action of a figure in a bad cinematograph rather
than that of a human being, subjected the inhabitants to an infuriated
philippic in Provencal, of which I could not understand one word. The
crowd, with here and there a murmur of remonstrance, listened to him in
silence. When he had finished they hung their heads, the gendarmes
shrugged their majestic and fateful shoulders and lit cigarettes, and
the gargoyle-visaged ancient with the neck of crocodile hide turned
grumbling away. I have never witnessed anything so magical as the effect
produced by this electric personage. Even McKeogh, who during the
previous clamour had sat stiff behind his wheel, keeping expressionless
eyes fixed on the cap of the radiator, turned his head two degrees of a
circle and glanced at his surroundings.

The instant peace was established our rescuer darted up to me with the
directness of a dragon-fly and shook me warmly by the hand. As he had
done me a service, I responded with a grateful smile; besides, his
aspect was peculiarly prepossessing. I guessed him to be about
five-and-thirty. He had a clear olive complexion, black moustache and
short silky vandyke beard, and the most fascinating, the most humorous,
the most mocking, the most astonishingly bright eyes I have ever seen in
my life. I murmured a few expressions of thanks, while he prolonged the
handshake with the fervour of a long-lost friend.

"It's all right, my dear sir. Don't worry any more," he said in
excellent English, but with a French accent curiously tinged with
Cockney. "The old gentleman's as sound as a bell--not a bruise on his
body." He pushed me gently to the