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 know well enough there'll be war some day, seeing there's always been war after war since the world was a world, and therefore there'll be another; but just now--at once--a big job like that? Nonsense! It's not true. No."