When we heard their prisoners squalling we ventured to look out. They had caught a dozen men and women from Béyant and were beating them as they stood in a row, with their faces turned to the wall. The poor devils were not much hurt, but they screamed like curlews. Being safe enough ourselves, we slipped down along the ramparts and brandished pikes over the walls, on which we had stuck hams, saveloys, and black-puddings. We could hear the besiegers uttering yells of hunger and rage, and how that did put new life into us! To squeeze out the last drop (for there is never too much of a good thing), when it grew late we set out tables in the open air on the slopes, sheltered by the wall, and loaded them with victuals and drink. There we had a noisy feast, singing and drinking to Shrove-Tuesday. The outsiders nearly went out of their skins with fury, and so that day went off gaily, and no harm done. There was only one drawback. When Gueneau de Pousseaux, that big fool! got too mellow, nothing would do but he must walk on top of the wall with his glass in his hand, just to defy them, and they knocked his head and his glass into splinters with a musket ball. This did not much bother us, but to make it even, we wounded one or two of them, for there can be no festivity, you know, without a little broken crockery. Chamaille waited till nightfall before leaving the town to go home. In vain we all said, “Old friend, you risk your neck. Wait here till it’s all over; God will take care of your parishioners.” He answered: “My place is with my flock. God would be maimed without me, for I am truly His right arm. But I will not fail Him, you may swear.” “I believe you,” said I. “You gave full proof of it when the Huguenots attacked your church, and you threw a great lump of plaster at their Captain Papiphage and knocked him over.” “That was a surprise for him, miscreant that he was,” said he. “For me too, really. I mean no harm and hate to see blood flow; it disgusts me, but the devil alone knows what gets into a man when he is among hot-heads. He becomes a wolf.” “That is true,” said I, “you lose what little sense you have when you are in a crowd. A hundred wise men make a fool, and a hundred sheep a wolf. But tell me, Vicar, how can you reconcile two codes--that of the man who lives alone with his conscience and wants peace for himself and all the world, and that of men in the mass, who make a virtue out of war and wickedness. Which of these is of God?” “That is a very silly question! Both. Everything comes from God.”