“Go on!” I shouted. “Fire a volley at that belfry, and let the man who wants me have another chance at me. I’ll give the word. Make ready!” I commanded. There was a pause and a chorus of protests, and then mechanically each man jerked out the empty shell and drove the next cartridge in place. “Aim!” I shouted. They hesitated and then raised their pieces in a wavering line, and I looked into the muzzles of a dozen rifles. “Now then--damn you,” I cried. “Fire!” They fired, and my eyes and nostrils were filled with burning smoke, but not a bullet had passed near me. “Again!” I shouted, stamping my foot. I was so angry that I suppose I was really hardly accountable for what I did. “I told you you were cowards,” I cried. “You can only shoot men in the back. You don’t like me, don’t you?” I cried, taunting them. “I’m a braggart, am I? Yes. I’m a bully, am I? Well, here’s your chance. Get rid of me! Once again now. Make ready,” I commanded. “Aim! Fire!” Again the smoke swept up, and again I had escaped. I remember that I laughed at them and that the sound was crazy and hysterical, and I remember that as I laughed I shook out my arms to show them I was unhurt. And as I did that someone in the cafe cried, “Thank God!” And another shouted, “That’s enough of this damn nonsense,” and a big man with a bushy red beard sprang up and pulled off his hat. “Now then,” he cried. “All together, boys. Three cheers for the little one!” and they all jumped and shouted like mad people. They cheered me again and again, although all the time the bullets from the belfry were striking about them, ringing on the iron tables and on the sidewalk, and tearing great gashes in the awnings overhead. And then it seemed as though the sunlight on the yellow buildings and on the yellow earth of the plaza had been suddenly shut off, and I dropped into a well of blackness and sank deeper and deeper. When I looked up the big man was sitting on the floor holding me as comfortably as though I were a baby, and my face was resting against his red beard, and my clothes and everything about me smelt terribly of brandy. But the most curious thing about it was that though they told everyone in the Legion that I had stood up and made them shoot at me, they never let anyone find out that I had been so weak as to faint. I do not know whether it was the brandy they gave me that later led me to charge those guns, but I appreciate now that my conduct was certainly silly and mad enough to be excused only in that way. According to the doctrine of chances I should have lost nine lives, and according to the rules governing an army in the field I should have been court-martialled. Instead of which, the men caught me up on their shoulders and carried me around the plaza, and Laguerre and Garcia looked on from the steps of the Cathedral and laughed and waved to us.