“Send me rain,” he begged audibly of the heavens, “send me torrents of rain.” And the heavens responded, so people affirmed. A few minutes later the heavens sent M. Lépine thunder, lightning and a deluge that reduced the blazing kiosks to hissing, sodden ruins; cleared the frantic boulevards; allowed police, soldiers and even M. Lépine to go to bed. But, on the other hand, caused Jules Guérin and his fellow outlaws and conspirators against the Republic to exult wildly and grotesquely on the roof of Fort Chabrol. For Guérin was short of water. The supply had been cut off and Guérin’s only salvation was surrender or rain. And it rained, and it poured and it thundered. The heavens were equally kind to Rebel, and Chief of the Police. Up there on the roof of conspiring Fort Chabrol assembled Guérin and his companions with baths, buckets and basins; with jugs, glasses and mugs; all of which speedily overflowed with the rain. Down there in the street, the soldiers in occupation of the besieged thoroughfare stared upwards, open-mouthed, at the amazing spectacle on the roof—Guérin and Company joining hands and dancing with glee amidst their multitudinous rain-catching vessels; Guérin bending perilously over the parapet and roaring forth between the explosions of thunder and the flashes of lightning: “We have got enough water for months. Tell Lépine we defy him.” Another jig from Guérin et Cie. Guérin once again at the edge of the parapet, mockingly drinking the health of the soldiers below, and then emptying baths full of water into the street and bellowing: “Voilà de l’eau,” and performing such delirious, dangerous antics that it was deemed necessary to telephone an account of the scene to the Chief of the Police. “Let him dance his jigs all night in the rain; it will cool him,” replied M. Lépine. “Je le connais: he is too clever to fall over the parapet.” Nor did Guérin capsize. Nor yet did M. Lépine put an end to the jigs on the roof—to the rest of the Fort Chabrol farce—until Paris had been appeased by the Rennes Court Martial verdict, and the acutest stage of the Anti-Dreyfusard agitation died out amidst exclamations of: “C’est fini! Quelle sacrée affaire! Quel cauchemar! Enfin, n’en parlons plus.” After the lurid autumn of 1899 came a particularly bleak, cheerless winter. So bitter was the weather that fond mothers kept their children indoors, and thus Edouard and Yvonne yawned with boredom in their nurseries, and quarrelled, and exchanged blows, and gave way to tears. “Toys are not what they used to be,” complained a mother to M. Lépine. “They are stupid or vulgar, and children get tired of them.”