The whole assembly murmured approval of these words; and the distant shouting of the people who were crowding around the building on the outside was a still more eloquent commentary upon them. But at this moment a voice of thunder cried,-- "Silence!" Every voice was hushed; for he who spoke in such a commanding and steady voice was Jean Peuquoy, the syndic of the guild of weavers,--a citizen who was held in the highest esteem and consideration, and was a little feared by the people. Jean Peuquoy was a type of the sturdy bourgeoisie, who loved their city as a mother and as a child, worshipped her and grumbled at her, lived always for her, and would die for her if need were. For the honest weaver there was no world but France, and in all France naught but St. Quentin. No one was so well versed as he in the history and traditions of the town, its ancient customs, and old-time legends. There was not a quarter, not a street, not a house, which in its present or its past had any secrets from Jean Peuquoy. He was in himself the municipality personified. His shop was a second Grand'place, and his wooden house in the Rue St. Martin another town-hall. This venerable mansion was made noticeable by a very peculiar coat-of-arms,--a shuttle crowned between the antlers of a full-grown stag. One of Jean Peuquoy's ancestors (for Jean Peuquoy reckoned up his ancestors like any gentleman)--a weaver like himself, it need not be said, and in addition an archer of renown--had put out the two eyes of this fine stag with two shafts at more than a hundred paces. These superb antlers are still to be seen at St. Quentin in the Rue St. Martin. Every one for ten leagues around knew the antlers and the weaver. Jean Peuquoy was thus the city itself; and every dweller in St. Quentin listened to the voice of his country speaking through him. And so no one stirred when the weaver's voice, rising above the grumbling and the muttering, shouted, "Silence!"