an opened a window
and emptied a vase full of filth over his head, a cabby sent his hat
flying from one end of the street to the other by a blow of his
whip amid the cheers of the crowd who now felt themselves avenged. A
butcher's boy knocked Colomban with his paste-pot, his brush, and his
posters, from the top of his ladder into the gutter, and the proud
Penguins then felt the greatness of their country. Colomban stood up,
covered with filth, lame, and with his elbow injured, but tranquil and
resolute.

"Low brutes," he muttered, shrugging his shoulders.

Then he went down on all-fours in the gutter to look for his glasses
which he had lost in his fall. It was then seen that his coat was split
from the collar to the tails and that his trousers were in rags. The
rancour of the crowd grew stronger.

On the other side of the street stretched the big St. Orberosian Stores.
The patriots seized whatever they could lay their hands on from the shop
front, and hurled at Colomban oranges, lemons, pots of jam, pieces of
chocolate, bottles of liqueurs, boxes of sardines, pots of foie gras,
hams, fowls, flasks of oil, and bags of haricots. Covered with the
debris of the food, bruised, tattered, lame, and blind, he took to
flight, followed by the shop-boys, bakers, loafers, citizens, and
hooligans whose number increased each moment and who kept shouting:
"Duck him! Death to the traitor! Duck him!" This torrent of vulgar
humanity swept along the streets and rushed into the Rue St. Mael.
The police did their duty. From all the adjacent streets constables
proceeded and, holding their scabbards with their left hands, they
went at full speed in front of the pursuers. They were on the point of
grabbing Colomban in their huge hands when he suddenly escaped them by
falling through an open man-hole to the bottom of a sewer.

He spent the night there in the darkness, sitting close by the dirty
water amidst the fat and slimy rats. He thought of his task, and his
swelling heart filled with courage and pity. And when the dawn threw
a pale ray of light into the air-hole he got up and said, speaking to
himself:

"I see that the fight will be a stiff one."

Forthwith he composed a memorandum in which he clearly showed that
Pyrot could not have stolen from the Ministry of War the eighty thousand
trusses of hay which it had never received, for the reason that Maubec
had never delivered them, though he had received the money. Colomban
caused t