ers of La Villette.

The conclusions of the young leader were materially assisted and
hastened by the flattering attention with which he was received by the
young men wearing royalist badges, and by the black looks from the
more timid republicans. He thereupon avoided the streets of the
quarter, and devoted his time to answering such letters as bore
signature and address. He sought to disabuse the public mind, so far
as the writers were concerned, by declaring his adherence to the
republic, and by returning the money so far as possible.

Jean Marot had now for the first time, with many others, turned his
attention to the revelations in the Dreyfus case as appeared in the
_Figaro_, and saw with amazement the use being made of a wholly
fictitious crisis to destroy French liberty. He was appalled at these
disclosures. Not that they demonstrated the innocence of a condemned
man, but because they showed the utter absence of conscience on the
part of his accusers and the criminal ignorance of the military
leaders on whom France relied in the hour of public danger. For the
first time he saw, what the whole civilized world outside of France
had seen with surprise and indignation, that the conviction of Captain
Dreyfus rested upon the testimony of a staff-officer of noble blood
who lived openly and shamelessly on the immoral earnings of his
mistress, and who was the self-acknowledged agent of a maison de
toleration on commission. In the person of this distinguished member
of the "condotteri" was centred the so-called "honor of the army." As
for the so-called "evidence," no police judge of England or America
would have given a man five days on it.

Matters were at this stage when one morning about a fortnight since
the day Mlle. Fouchette had changed masters they reached the
bursting-point. Jean suddenly jumped from his seat where he had been
looking over his mail and broke into a torrent of invective.

"Dame!" said Mlle. Fouchette, coming in from the kitchen in the act of
manipulating a plate with a towel,--"surely, Monsieur Jean, it can't
be as bad as that!"

"Mille tonnerres!" cried Jean, kicking the chair viciously,--"it's
worse!"

"Worse?"

"Fouchette, you're a fool!"

Mlle. Fouchette kicked the door till it rattled. She also used oaths,
rare for her.

"Stop!" he roared. "What in the devil's name are you doing that for?
Stop!"

"Why not? I don't want to be a fool. I want to do just as you do,
monsieur!"

"Oh