The Chouan took leave of every one, and more tenderly of his new friend, perhaps, than of his old acquaintances. Then noiselessly and on foot, as if he were the least of the royalist officers, he gained the Barrière d'Orléans, while Danican, Lemaistre, and the young president of the Section Le Peletier laid their plans for the following day. As he departed, they all remarked: "He is a formidable fellow, that Cadoudal!" About the same time that he whose incognito we have just betrayed was taking leave of Morgan and his companions, and was making his way to the Barrière d'Orléans, a group of those young men of whom we have already spoken crossed from the Rue de la Loi to the Rue Feydeau, shouting: "Down with the Convention! Down with the Two-thirds Men! Long live the Sections!" At the corner they found themselves face to face with a patrol of patriot soldiers, on whom the last orders of the Convention enjoined the greatest severity against all nocturnal brawlers. The group equalled the patrol in number, and they received the three summonses required by law with hoots and jeers; their only reply to the third was a pistol-shot which wounded one of the soldiers. The latter retaliated by a volley which killed one of the young men and wounded several others. The guns being discharged, the two bands were now on an equal footing as regards weapons. Thanks to their enormous canes, which in hands accustomed to wield them became veritable clubs, the men of the Sections could turn aside the bayonets as easily as they could parry the point of a sword in a duel. They could moreover strike blows which, when received on the chest, though they could not pierce like a sword-thrust, were equally dangerous, and when aimed at the head would fell a man as readily as a butcher fells an ox. As usual, the brawl, which, owing to the number of persons engaged in it, assumed frightful proportions, set the whole neighborhood in a tumult. The uproar and turmoil were increased from the fact that it was the first night of a popular representation at the Théâtre Feydeau, then the fashionable theatre of Paris. They were playing "Toberne, or the Swedish Fisherman," the words by Patras, the music by Bruni; and "The Good Son," the words by Louis Henequin, and the music by Lebrun. Consequently, the Place Feydeau was thronged with carriages and the Passage Feydeau with playgoers on foot.