There he is. Close by he is more drunk than in the distance! Drunkenness bedaubs him; his eyes are filled with wine, his cheeks are like baked clay, his nose like a baked apple, he is almost blinded by viscous tufts. In the middle of that open space he seems caught in a whirlpool. It happens that he is in front of me for a moment, and he hurls at my head some furious phrases in which I recognize, now and again, the truths in which I believe! Then, with antics at once desperate and too heavy for him, he tries to perform some kind of pantomime which represents the wealthy class, round-paunched as a bag of gold, sitting on the proletariat till their noses are crushed in the gutter, and proclaiming, with their eyes up to heaven and their hands on their hearts, "And above all, no more class-wars!" There is something alarming in the awkwardness of the grimacing object begotten by that obstructed brain. It seems as if real suffering is giving voice through him with a beast's cry. When he has spoken, he collapses on to a stone. With his fist, whose leather is covered with red hair, like a cow's, he hides the squalid face that looks as if it had been spat upon. "Folks aren't wicked," he says, "but they're stupid, stupid, stupid." And Brisbille cries. Just then Father Piot advances into the space, with his silver aureole, his benevolent smile, and the vague and continuous lisping which trickles from his lips. He stops in the middle of us, gives a nod to each one and continuing his ingenuous reflections aloud, he murmurs, "Hem, hem! The most important thing of all, in war, is the return to religious ideas. Hem!" The monstrous calm of the saying makes me start, and communicates final agitation to Brisbille. Throwing himself upright, the blacksmith flourishes his trembling fist, tries to hold it under the old priest's chin, and bawls, "You? Shall I tell you how _you_ make me feel, eh? Why----" Some young men seize him, hustle him and throw him down. His head strikes the ground and he is at last immobile. Father Piot raises his arms to heaven and kneels over the vanquished madman. There are tears in the old man's eyes. When we have made a few steps away I cannot help saying to Marie, with a sort of courage, that Brisbille is not wrong in all that he says. Marie is shocked, and says, "Oh!" "There was a time," she says, reproachfully, "when you set about him!" I should like Marie to understand what I am wanting to say. I explain to her, that although he may be a drunkard and a brute, he is right in what he thinks. He stammers and hiccups the truth, but it was not he who made it, and it is whole and pure. He is a degraded prophet, but the relics of his dreams have remained accurate. And that saintly old man, who is devotion incarnate, who would not harm a fly, he is only a lowly servant of lies; but he brings his little link to the chain, and he smiles on the side of the executioners.