ested alone in the
abandoned rack.

In this cook-shop his eyes fell one evening upon Colomban's memorandum
in favour of Pyrot. He read it as he was cracking some bad nuts and
suddenly, exalted with astonishment, admiration, horror, and pity, he
forgot all about falling meteors and shooting stars and saw nothing but
the innocent man hanging in his cage exposed to the winds of heaven and
the ravens perching upon it.

That image did not leave him. For a week he had been obsessed by the
innocent convict, when, as he was leaving his cook-shop, he saw a crowd
of citizens entering a public-house in which a public meeting was going
on. He went in. The meeting was disorderly; they were yelling, abusing
one another and knocking one another down in the smoke-laden hall. The
Pyrotists and the Anti-Pyrotists spoke in turn and were alternately
cheered and hissed at. An obscure and confused enthusiasm moved the
audience. With the audacity of a timid and retired man Bidault-Coquille
leaped upon the platform and spoke for three-quarters of an hour. He
spoke very quickly, without order, but with vehemence, and with all the
conviction of a mathematical mystic. He was cheered. When he got down
from the platform a big woman of uncertain age, dressed in red, and
wearing an immense hat trimmed with heroic feathers, throwing herself
into his arms, embraced him, and said to him:

"You are splendid!"

He thought in his simplicity that there was some truth in the statement.

She declared to him that henceforth she would live but for Pyrot's
defence and Colomban's glory. He thought her sublime and beautiful. She
was Maniflore, a poor old courtesan, now forgotten and discarded, who
had suddenly become a vehement politician.

She never left him. They spent glorious hours together in doss-houses
and in lodgings beautified by their love, in newspaper offices, in
meeting-halls and in lecture-halls. As he was an idealist, he persisted
in thinking her beautiful, although she gave him abundant opportunity of
seeing that she had preserved no charm of any kind. From her past beauty
she only retained a confidence in her capacity for pleasing and a lofty
assurance in demanding homage. Still, it must be admitted that this
Pyrot affair, so fruitful in prodigies, invested Maniflore with a sort
of civic majesty, and transformed her, at public meetings, into an
august symbol of justice and truth.

Bidault-Coquille and Maniflore did not kindle the least spa