"Be quiet, wicked man! You've no right to frighten folks!"

But the drunkard continues to shout full-throated, "To-morrow!
To-morrow! D'you think things will always go on like that? You're fit
for killing! To hell!"

Some people are impressed and disappear into the evening. Those who
are marking time around the obscure fanatic are growling, "He's not
only bad, he's mad, the dirty beast!"

"It's disgraceful," says the young curate.

Brisbille goes up to him. "_You_ tell me, then, _you_, what'll happen
very soon--Jesuit, puppet, land-shark! We know you, you and your
filthy, poisonous trade!"

"_Say that again_!"

It was I who said that. Leaving Marie's arm instinctively I sprang
forward and planted myself before the sinister person. After the
horrified murmur which followed the insult, a great silence had fallen
on the scene.

Astounded, and his face suddenly filling with fear, Brisbille stumbles
and beats a retreat.

The crowd regains confidence, and laughs, and congratulates me, and
reviles the back of the man who is sinking in the stream.

"You were fine!" Marie said to me when I took her arm again, slightly
trembling.

I returned home elated by my energetic act, still all of a tremor,
proud and happy. I have obeyed the prompting of my blood. It was the
great ancestral instinct which made me clench my fists and throw myself
bodily, like a weapon, upon the enemy of all.

After dinner, naturally, I went to the military tattoo, at which, by an
unpardonable indifference, I have not regularly been present, although
these patriotic demonstrations have been organized by Monsieur Joseph
Boneas and his League of Avengers. A long-drawn shudder, shrill and
sonorous, took flight through the main streets, filling the spectators
and especially the young folks, with enthusiasm for the great and
glorious deeds of the future. And Petrolus, in the front row of the
crowd, was striding along in the crimson glow of the fairy-lamps--clad
in a visionary uniform of red.

I remember that I talked a great deal that evening in our quarter, and
then in the house. Our quarter is something like all towns, something
like all country-sides, something like it is everywhere--it is a
foreshortened picture of all societies in the old universe, as my life
is a picture of life.

CHAPTER IX

THE STORM

"There's going to be war," said Benoit, on our doorsteps in July.

"No," said Crillon, who was there, too, "I kn