Part 46 (1/2)
”It is the head-dress of the barricades.”
”Sure!”
”Of la Villette, hein?”
”The man is mad!”
”Ah! look at that!”
”There goes a good rascal.”
”A young man and his father perhaps.”
”No!”
”Long live the students!”
”En avant!” roared the man in the red turban.
”Vive l'anarchie!” shouted an individual on the curb whose eyes were glazed from absinthe.
The crowd laughed. Some applauded,--not so much the sentiment as the drunken wit. The people were being entertained.
”We certainly have the street this day,” observed Jean to his companion.
”Right you are, my boy!”
Both noted the squadron of cuira.s.siers drawn up in front of the Opera, the police agents ma.s.sed on either side, and the regiment of the line under arms in the Rue 4 Septembre close at hand. In the middle distance a squadron of the Garde de Paris came leisurely up the Avenue de l'Opera.
”You see, my friend,” said Jean, smiling, ”the government is looking sharply after its strategic position.”
”Vive l'armee!”
The man in the red turban swung his baton, and his resounding cry was caught up by the manifestants. It was the voice of flattery and conciliation extended to the army, through which the royalist party hoped to win a throne.
But they were not alone there. From several quarters came sharp rejoinders of ”Vive la justice!” ”Vive la republique!” ”Vive la France!”
While these cries seemed harmless if not proper, they were judged seditious by the police, who made a dash for those who uttered them.
In another instant the man with the red turban would have saved the agents the trouble of arresting the nearest person had not Jean grasped the baton. The brute face had taken on a flush of red ferocity. His blow restrained, the man spat in the face of his intended victim and strode on.
”Not yet, my friend!” exclaimed the student leader. ”What! precipitate a fight here! Madness! We should be ridden down within three minutes!
The government will be sure to protect the Opera.”
”Yes; you are always right, mon enfant,” growled the man.
Meanwhile, the unfortunate Parisian who wanted ”justice” got it; being dragged off by two police agents, who took turns in kicking and cuffing their prisoner on the way to the depot. There he was charged with uttering seditious cries calculated to lead to a breach of the peace.
Gathering confidence from immunity, however, the manifestants soon ceased to observe this respect for public opinion. In Boulevard Haussmann they got out from the eye of the military. They began to hustle those who happened to get in their way. Those who were not sufficiently explicit in their views were compelled to cry ”Vive l'armee;” whoever refused was promptly knocked on the head.
”Monsieur Front de Boeuf,” said Jean Marot to his companion, who had narrowly missed spattering the young leader with the brains of a misguided Dreyfusarde, ”if you will strike less heavily you will longer remain with us, and possibly for a time escape the guillotine.