“Ay, comrades,” said he--“it is we on the Hill of Martyrs who _live_.... Climb Montmartre, and you are in a rare atmosphere--get you up amongst the scaffolding a-top of it, and you may touch the clouds--the air is light, vivacious, exciting as wine--solemn things and dull talk fall away from you--you must stoop if you would kiss the hand to Paris, stoop to hail her, stoop to see her. Here we condescend to the world. We are amongst the clouds--breathe the air the gods have breathed. We have here no rare inclinations to riot--here _life_ is a riot. Down there they toil and moil all day through, all the months, to snatch infrequent glimpses of life, that they have not the habit to enjoy. Tush!” He laughed. “They call it a _holiday_! Ho, Ho, Ho! a holiday!... They lie down at the ticking of a clock--sleep at the bidding of their task-masters--awake at the striking of a clock to work their fingers to the bone for a shabby grave. Worse still, work others’ fingers to the bone, even the fingers of woman and child, this pitiful scourged crew, to make rich the brutish vulgarians whom they so fantastically serve. God! what a hell’s stew!... With the darkness they lie down and go to sleep--to awake with the daylight to further toil and moil again. A Russian grand-duke steals their prettiest daughter for a week or more, then takes another. The rich, who are their idols, misuse their beautiful women; so they look up to the rich.... But we! we live all the while. If we’ve a mind to it, we rejoice in the night--we sleep when we will--live whilst we may. Life’s but for a few flitting years at best. These others are so mad they think us mad who know them mad.... If we are mad----” He stopped a waiter who passed with a tray of tumblers filled with absinthe. His hand shook so that he spilled some liquor as he raised a glass: “If we are mad, then here’s to madness!” They roared with laughter, banged their fists upon the board, raised their glasses and drank with him. He emptied the glass and flung it to a waiter. “If theirs be sanity to huddle in foul dens, feed on the Mad Cow of Hunger, scowl sullenly at life from work-stunned eyes, all to fill the purse of pot-bellied tradesmen, to build with their blood and toil the vulgar habitations of their pretentious vulgarity, then ’twere better to be mad.... And no worse than Sanity.... We too have tasted the flesh of the Mad Cow, but we have not sold our souls for bread, nor our lives to be allowed to rummage on a dunghill.” He held out his hands and grasped the air, adding with hoarse passion: “We live, I say--we live.” He stood proudly, and gazed at the applause. They called to him to sing; and he stood there and sang the song that held Paris; and as he sang the refrain, they all burst into the chorus: “Proud as kings and loud as carters, Live we who live on the Hill of Martyrs.” When the rousing chorus was done, amidst thunders of applause, fists banged upon the tables, André Joyeux mounted a chair: