He was standing at the window of a small house in an insignificant street on the southern side of the Seine. He was remarkably calm--quite the calmest man within the radius of a mile; for the insignificant little street was in an uproar. There was a barricade at each end of it. Such a barricade as Parisians love. It was composed of a few overturned omnibuses; for the true Parisian is a cynic. He likes overturned things, and he loves to see objects of peace converted to purposes of war. He is not content that ploughshares be beaten into swords. He prefers altar-rails. And so this little street was blocked at either end by a barricade of overturned omnibuses, of old hampers and empty boxes, of a few loads of second-hand bricks and paving-stones brought from the scene of some drainage operations round the corner. In the street between the barricades, surged, hooted, and yelled that wildest and most dangerous of incomprehensibles--a Paris mob. Half-a-dozen orators were speaking at once, and no one was listening to them. Here and there amidst the rabble a voice was raised at times with suspicious persistence. “_Vive le Roi!_” it cried. “Long live the King!” A few took up the refrain, but the general tone was negative. It was not so much a question of upholding anything as of throwing down that which was already up. “Down with the Republic!” was the favourite cry. “Down with the President! Down with everything!” And each man cried down his favourite enemy. The Citizen Morot listened, and his contemptuous mouth was twisted with a delicate, subtle smile. “Ah!” he muttered. “The voice of the people. The howling of the wolves. Go on, go on, my braves. Cry 'Long live the King,' and soon you will begin to believe that you mean it. They are barking now. Let them bark. Soon we shall teach them to bite, and then--then, who knows?” His voice dropped almost to a whisper, and he stood there amidst the din and hubbub--dreaming. At last he raised his hand to his forehead--a prominent, rounded forehead, flat as the palm of one's hand from eyebrow to eyebrow, and curving at either side, sharply, back to deep-sunken temples. “Ah!” he exclaimed, with a little laugh; and he drew from an inner pocket a delicately scented pocket-handkerchief, with which he wiped his brow. “If I get excited now, what will it be when they begin--to bite?” All this while the orators were shouting their loudest, and the voices dispersed throughout the crowd raised at intervals their short, sharp cry of-- “Long live the King!”