ll-throated: "The sovereign people that can't stand on its own
legs!"

By the side of a few faint-hearted citizens who had already, since the
morning, modified their political opinions, a great figure rises before
my eyes--Fontan. I remember that night, already long ago, when a
chance glimpse through the vent-hole of his cellar showed me shiploads
of bottles of champagne heaped together, and pointed like shells. For
some future day he foresaw to-day's victory. He is really clever, he
sees clearly and he sees far. He has rescued law and order by a sort
of genius.

The constraint which has weighed all day on our gestures and words
explodes in delight. Noisily we cast off that demeanor of conspirators
which has bent our shoulders since morning. The windows that were
closed during the weighty hours of the insurrection are opened wide;
the houses breathe again.

"We're saved from that gang!" people say, when they approach each
other.

This feeling of deliverance pervades the most lowly. On the step of
the little blood-red restaurant I spy Monsieur Mielvaque, hopping for
joy. He is shivering, too, in his thin gray coat, cracked with
wrinkles, that looks like wrapping paper; and one would say that his
dwindled face had at long last caught the hue of the folios he
desperately copies among his long days and his short nights, to pick up
some sprigs of extra pay. There he stands, not daring to enter the
restaurant (for a reason he knows too well); but how delighted he is
with the day's triumph for society! And Mademoiselle Constantine, the
dressmaker, incurably poor and worn away by her sewing-machine, is
overjoyed. She opens wide the eyes which seem eternally full of tears,
and in the grayish abiding half-mourning of imperfect cleanliness, in
pallid excitement, she claps her hands.

Marie and I can hear the furious desperate hammering of Brisbille in
his forge, and we begin to laugh as we have not laughed for a long
time.

At night, before going to sleep, I recall my former democratic fancies.
Thank God, I have escaped from a great peril! I can see it clearly by
the terror which the workmen's menace spread in decent circles, and by
the universal joy which greeted their recoil! My deepest tendencies
take hold of me again for good, and everything settles down as before.

* * * * * *

Much time has gone by. It is ten years now since I was married, and in
that lapse of time