incoherent words: "Court intrigues--infamous
machinations." And suddenly, shaking his fist at the train which had
already disappeared, with bloodshot eyes and the foam of fierce wrath
on his lips, he cried with the roar of a wild beast:

"Vile curs!"

"Courage, Jansoulet, courage."

You can guess who said that, and who, passing his arm through the
Nabob's, tried to straighten him up, to make him throw out his breast
as he did, led him to the carriages amid the stupefied silence of the
braided coats, and helped him to enter, crushed and bewildered, as a
relative of the deceased is hoisted into a mourning carriage at the
close of the lugubrious ceremony. The rain was beginning to fall, the
peals of thunder followed one another rapidly. They crowded into the
carriages, which started hurriedly homeward. Thereupon a heart-rending,
yet comical thing took place, one of those cruel tricks which cowardly
destiny plays upon its victims when they are down. In the fading light,
the increasing obscurity caused by the squall, the crowd that filled
all the approaches to the station believed that it could distinguish a
Royal Highness amid such a profusion of gold lace, and as soon as the
wheels began to revolve, a tremendous uproar, an appalling outcry which
had been brewing in all those throats for an hour past, arose and
filled the air, rebounded from hill to hill and echoed through the
valley: "Vive le Bey!" Warned by that signal, the first flourishes rang
out, the singing societies struck up in their turn, and as the noise
increased from point to point, the road from Giffas to Saint-Romans was
naught but one long, unbroken wave of sound. In vain did Cardailhac,
all the gentlemen, Jansoulet himself, lean out of the windows and make
desperate signs: "Enough! enough!" Their gestures were lost in the
confusion, in the darkness; what was seen of them seemed an
encouragement to shout louder. And I give you my word that it was in no
wise needed. All those Southerners, whose enthusiasm had been kept at
fever heat since morning, excited still more by the tedium of the long
wait and by the storm, gave all that they had of voice, of breath, of
noisy energy, blending with the national hymn of Provence that
oft-repeated cry, which broke in upon it like a refrain: "Vive le Bey!"
The majority had no sort of idea what a bey might be, did not even
picture him to themselves, and gave a most extraordinary pronunciation
to the unfamiliar title, as