"Well, yes, I'll lead you!" The huge fist, describing a circle, crashed upon a table. "We're here to fight. We'll wait no longer. Hesitate and bandy words and deliberate whoever wants--we are not such! We have suffered and ached. We have been crushed to the ground, saddled to the earth,--we, human beings, like cattle, and we remember our wrongs. Fear? Neither God nor men do we fear. We came here, we, marching from Marseilles,--all the way from Marseilles,--to wipe out the accursed tyrants, to make things go faster, and, by God, they shall go!" Nicole saw the hideous face transformed, lighted up with the glow of martyrdom. From lungs of leather there burst a welcoming response. Dossonville, facing the fanatic without a change of position, waited imperturbably the lull. Geneviève was breathing hard, in her excitement seizing the hand of her protectress. "Bravo, patriot, you are eloquent!" came at last the calm answer of Dossonville. "But what can you do? March and be made into beefsteaks? The people, it is true, are hungry, but not a step will the sections move without Santerre. Will you march alone? What say you?" "I say they are traitors who would halt us!" burst forth Javogues, glancing at the man who dared to jest with him. "Meaning Santerre?" "Meaning those who bear false messages. I don't like these manners. Who are you?" "My friend," Dossonville said, with cool scorn of the threatening throng, "you are curious." "Aristocrat!" "Am I?" "I say you are!" "Indeed!" "You will not answer?" "Certainly! Citoyen Dossonville, at present lieutenant of the Section des Bonnes Nouvelles, in the past soldier, sailor, actor, innkeeper, a bit of everything except the law and the church. Citoyen Boudgoust," he continued, shifting his head just enough to bring into range the apathetic waiter, "before this fire-eater is at my throat, come, vouch for me!" The hang-down head wabbled a moment on the bent shoulders. "Yes, yes, a good patriot, Citoyen Javogues, and an eater of little aristocrats." "As all good patriots should be!" retorted Dossonville, gravely. "There, citoyen, good patriots should not quarrel when there are so many tyrants to be digested. There is my hand--touch!" Javogues stared at the proffered hand a moment stolidly, drunkenly, then deliberately folded his arms. A murmur of dissent gathered volume. "Comrade, you are wrong!" "Give him your hand!" "Aye, touch together!" Above the outburst the voice of Dossonville rose acridly. "Dame! mon ami, you bring strange manners from Marseilles." "I bring something else." "And that is--" "The way to tell a traitor." "And that is--" "By the look in his eyes!" Raising his fist, the Marseillais lurched forward with the angry shout of "Spy!"