"Hullo, Riche!" cried Marcel, running breathlessly up and pushing his way to him through the crowd. "What's up? What are they pulling you about for?" "I saw this brute of an Italian belabouring his bear over the head with a stick, and pulling the chain until his nose was covered with blood, and my blood was up, so I gave the fellow a taste of the beating that he had given the bear, and then the gendarmes, hearing the row, came up and arrested me." Riche struggled with the gendarmes, tried to get free, and twisting his leg between those of one of the gendarmes Jiu-Jitsu fashion, threw him on the ground. Marcel flung himself on the officer, and Riche would have got free, but the second slipped a noose of whip-cord over Riche's wrist, and drawing it tight, twisted it with a bit of stick so violently that he almost fainted with the pain. Marcel was struggling on the ground with the officer, when a third policeman pushed his way through the crowd, and they were promptly marched away as prisoners towards the gendarmerie, followed by a crowd of idlers. "What have those Allemands done?" cried a workman in a blouse, to his boon companion who was smoking the filthy stump of a cigarette. "Ma foi, the rascals have been caught pocket-picking--serve them jolly well right too. I saw them do it. Come, comrade, we will give evidence and get them well lodged in the Violon. Ils sont des sacr--res Allemands." At this moment a carriage and pair came dashing up, and a footman arrayed in gorgeous livery descended from his perch and opened the door. A general, magnificently attired in full dress uniform with a row of orders on his breast, stepped out, carrying his head proudly in the air, and looking for all the world like one of the old heroes of Gravelotte with his venerable-looking white locks and greyish white beard and moustache. The crowd made way for him and cheered as he marched with a firm military step towards the struggling prisoners. "Halt!" he cried in a voice of thunder, as the gendarmes, petrified with astonishment, stood at attention immediately and saluted him. "What are you doing with those two gentlemen?" he demanded in an imperious tone. "We are taking them to the gendarmerie for assaulting this Piedmontese with his bear, and for violently resisting us while we were performing our duty in arresting him. One of them threw my comrade on to the ground and would have killed him had not a third member of the force arrived." "I command you to release them immediately. Are you aware that they happen to be particular friends of mine, and belong to the Embassy? I shall hold you all three responsible for this. Give me your names at once. Do you hear me?" he said, as he stamped his foot on the ground with impatience as they hesitated to obey him. Trembling with fear they wrote their names and numbers on a card, and handed it to him.