swoop, constructed a calendar to suit themselves, and worshipped
Reason in Notre Dame represented by a ballet dancer. In other words,
he was an egoist of the egoists of earth.

He was, in fact, so unbearably a bear in his treatment of little
Fouchette that only the most extraordinary circumstances would seem to
excuse him.

And the circumstances were quite extraordinary. Jean was suffering
from personal notoriety. Unseen hands were tossing him about and
pulling him to pieces. Unknown purposes held him as in a vice.

Within the last two weeks his mail had grown from two to some twenty
letters a day,--most of which letters were not only of a strongly
incendiary nature, but expressed a wholly false conception of his
political position and desires. He was being inundated by
indiscriminate praise and abuse. There were reams of well-meant advice
and quires of threats of violence.

Among these letters had been some enclosing money and drafts to a
considerable amount,--to be used in a way which was plainly apparent.
From a distinguished royalist he had received in a single cover the
sum of ten thousand francs "for the cause." From another had come five
thousand francs for his "personal use." Various smaller sums
aggregated not less than ten thousand francs more, most of which was
to be expended at discretion in the restoration of a "good" and
"stable" and "respectable" government to unhappy France. Besides cash
were drafts and promises,--the latter reaching unmeasured sums. And
interspersed with all these were strong hints of political preferment
that would have turned almost any youthful head less obstinate than
that which ornamented the broad shoulders of Jean Marot.

At first Jean was amused, then he was astonished. Finally he became
indignant and angry to the bursting-point.

It was several days before he could adequately comprehend what had
provoked this furious storm, with its shower of money and warning
flashes of wrath and rumblings of violence. Then it became clear that
he was being made the political tool of the reactionary combination
then laying the axe at the root of the republican tree. The
Orleanists, Bonapartists, Anti-Semites, and their allies were quick to
see the value of a popular leader in the most turbulent and
unmanageable quarter of Paris. The Quartier Latin was second only to
Montmartre as a propagating bed for revolution; the fiery youth of the
great schools were quite as important as the butch