his statement to be distributed in the streets of Alca. The
people refused to read it and tore it up in anger. The shop-keepers
shook their fists at the distributers, who made off, chased by angry
women armed with brooms. Feelings grew warm and the ferment lasted the
whole day. In the evening bands of wild and ragged men went about
the streets yelling: "Death to Colomban!" The patriots snatched whole
bundles of the memorandum from the newsboys and burned them in the
public squares, dancing wildly round these bon-fires with girls whose
petticoats were tied up to their waists.

Some of the more enthusiastic among them went and broke the windows of
the house in which Colomban had lived in perfect tranquillity during his
forty years of work.

Parliament was roused and asked the Chief of the Government what
measures he proposed to take in order to repel the odious attacks
made by Colomban upon the honour of the National Arm and the safety
of Penguinia. Robin Mielleux denounced Colomban's impious audacity and
proclaimed amid the cheers of the legislators that the man would be
summoned before the Courts to answer for his infamous libel.

The Minister of War was called to the tribune and appeared in it
transfigured. He had no longer the air, as in former days, of one of the
sacred geese of the Penguin citadels. Now, bristling, with outstretched
neck and hooked beak, he seemed the symbolical vulture fastened to the
livers of his country's enemies.

In the august silence of the assembly he pronounced these words only:

"I swear that Pyrot is a rascal."

This speech of Greatauk was reported all over Penguinia and satisfied
the public conscience.

V. THE REVEREND FATHERS AGARIC AND CORNEMUSE

Colomban bore with meekness and surprise the weight of the general
reprobation. He could not go out without being stoned, so he did not
go out. He remained in his study with a superb obstinacy, writing new
memoranda in favour of the encaged innocent. In the mean time among
the few readers that he found, some, about a dozen, were struck by his
reasons and began to doubt Pyrot's guilt. They broached the subject to
their friends and endeavoured to spread the light that had arisen in
their minds. One of them was a friend of Robin Mielleux and confided to
him his perplexities, with the result that he was no longer received by
that Minister. Another demanded explanations in an open letter to the
Minister of War. A third published a te