s the Pont-Vieux. On the steps in front
of the bronze gates were assembled all the defenders of Pyrot in Alca,
professors, publicists, workmen, some conservatives, others Radicals or
Revolutionaries, and by their negligent dress and fierce aspect could
be recognised comrades Phoenix, Larrivee, Lapersonne, Dagobert, and
Varambille. Squeezed in his funereal frock-coat and wearing his hat of
ceremony, Bidault-Coquille invoked the sentimental mathematics on
behalf of Colomban and Colonel Hastaing. Maniflore shone smiling and
resplendent on the topmost step, anxious, like Leaena, to deserve
a glorious monument, or to be given, like Epicharis, the praises of
history.

The seven hundred Pyrotists disguised as lemonade sellers,
utter-merchants, collectors of odds and ends, or anti-Pyrotists,
wandered round the vast building.

When Colomban appeared, so great an uproar burst forth that, struck by
the commotion of air and water, birds fell from the trees and fishes
floated on the surface of the stream.

On all sides there were yells:

"Duck Colomban, duck him, duck him!"

There were some cries of "Justice and truth!" and a voice was even heard
shouting:

"Down with the Army!"

This was the signal for a terrible struggle. The combatants fell in
thousands, and their bodies formed howling and moving mounds on top of
which fresh champions gripped each other by the throats. Women, eager,
pale, and dishevelled, with clenched teeth and frantic nails, rushed
on the man, in transports that, in the brilliant light of the public
square, gave to their faces expressions unsurpassed even in the shade
of curtains and in the hollows of pillows. They were going to seize
Colomban, to bite him, to strangle, dismember and rend him, when
Maniflore, tall and dignified in her red tunic, stood forth, serene
and terrible, confronting these furies who recoiled from before her in
terror. Colomban seemed to be saved; his partisans succeeded in clearing
a passage for him through the Place du Palais and in putting him into a
cab stationed at the corner of the Pont-Vieux. The horse was already in
full trot when Prince des Boscenos, Count Clena, and M. de La Trumelle
knocked the driver off his seat. Then, making the animal back and
pushing the spokes of the wheels, they ran the vehicle on to the parapet
of the bridge, whence they overturned it into the river amid the cheers
of the delirious crowd. With a resounding splash a jet of water rose
upwards,