Fouchette.

Her catlike jaws were distended and quivering,--the white teeth
glistened,--the eyes of steel seemed to emit sparks of fire,--the
small, lithe body swayed and undulated like that of an angry puma.

"Yes!--so!--death!--yes!--death!--you!--beast!--you devil!"

With each energetic word went a wild sweep of the claws or came a wisp
of beard.

The man bellowed with pain. The unexpected fury of her onslaught, the
general melee of close quarters, the instinct of protection,
contributed to prevent the man from simply braining her with his
"casse-tete." He was a lion against a hornet, powerless to punish his
puny assailant. As he finally broke away, she suddenly whirled and
delivered beneath the arm that shielded his eyes a kick that half
choked him with his own teeth.

Blinded with blood and howling with pain, the wretch plunged headlong
through the cafe front amid a crash of falling glass.

In the mean time, while this little curtain-raiser had been getting
under way, there was still another and more important drama in active
preparation.

The police, as if to lend such material aid to the royalist cause as
lay in their power, and to assist in the punishment of those misguided
Frenchmen who took the words "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite," inscribed
over the doors of the public hall, in a too literal sense, had
violently closed those doors against the latter and by cunningly
arranged barriers driven the unsuspecting Dreyfusardes down upon their
armed enemies. It was a most admirably arranged plot to destroy the
public peace, and reflected credit upon the clerico-royalist-military
council that had planned it.

Before the indignant republicans had begun to realize the character of
the trap set for them they found themselves hemmed in on three sides
by the police and attacked by the combination of hostile forces on the
other side.

The latter had been quietly assembled in the vicinity in anticipation
of this denouement. They were led by Senators and Deputies wearing the
official scarf of their high legislative function. This at once
afforded the latter reasonable immunity from arrest, and served to
encourage and assure those accustomed to look for some shadow of
authority to conceal or excuse the evil of their deeds.

The French Senator or Deputy who leads street rioters against a
peaceable assemblage of his fellow-citizens one day and serenely sits
in national legislative deliberation the next day is the f