The ball had now become infected by the element of riot. Scarcely had the music struck up than it ceased. Shrill screams, shouts, and sounds of scuffling came from the saloon, and, leaving the bonbon, who seemed quite unconcerned, to finish her brandy, I ran out and nearly into the arms of two gendarmes, who were making for the centre of the floor, where the carrot and the grenadier with the cock's feather were engaged in mortal combat. A ring of shouting spectators surrounded the combatants, and amidst them stood the shepherdess, weeping. She had been dancing with the grenadier, it seems, when they had cannoned against the carrot and his partner. Hence the blows. Scarcely had the gendarmes seized upon the combatants than someone struck a chandelier. The crash and the shower of glass were like a signal. Shouts, shrieks, the crowing of cocks, the blowing of horns seized from the orchestra, the smash of glass, the crash of benches overthrown, filled the air. The lights went out; someone hit me a blow on the head that made me see a thousand stars; and then I was in the street, with someone on my arm, someone I had seized and rescued; and the great white moon of May was lighting us, and the street, and the entry to the Closerie de Lilas, that beer-garden that the police had now seized upon and bottled. We had only just escaped in time. More and more gendarmes were hurrying up; and speechless, like deer who scent the hunters on the tracks, we ran, our shadows running before us, as if leading the way. "We are safe here," I said, glad to pull up, for my lameness did not lend grace to my running. "We are safe here. Those gendarmes are so busy with the others, they have no time to run after us." She had been crying when I pulled her out of the turmoil. She was laughing now. "Oh, mon Dieu!" said she. "That Changarnier! Never will I dance with him again." "Who is Changarnier?" I asked, looking at the lock of golden hair that had fallen loose on her shoulder, and which the moonlight was silvering, just as sorrow had silvered the hair of the once beautiful Countess Feliciani. "He is a beast!" replied she. "Is my dress torn?" She held out her dress by a finger and thumb on either side, and rotated before me solemnly in the moonlight, so that I might examine it back and front. "No," I said; "it is not torn, but you have lost your crook." "Yes," replied the shepherdess; "but I have found my sheep. Oh, I saw you looking at me. You followed me with your eyes the whole evening. You made Changarnier furious; he said you were an aristocrat. Who are you, M. l'Aristocrat?" "And you?" "I am a shepherdess. And you?" "I am an aristocrat." She laughed, put her arm in mine, and we walked, the great moon casting our shadows before us. "If we go this way," said she, "we can get something to eat. This is the Rue Petit Thouars. Are you hungry?" "Are you?" "Famished. Have you any money?" "Lots."