Hiraux was only too glad to get off so easily, and he accepted the terms.
When Mass was finished, the organist left, promising Hiraux not to tell the prior of his latest prank. Hiraux knew that this one surpassed all his others, and bordered on sacrilege; so when left to himself, he did his very best to fulfil the task allotted to him; a task that Fourier, in his distribution of the passions, reserved for children who, in his opinion, should do their work ardently.
We shall see whether Fourier is right or wrong when Considérant has erected his phalanstery.
Whether Hiraux did his task heartily or indifferently, it was done when the organist returned—he might really have been on the watch for that moment—followed by the brother cook and his scullions.
He had been to fetch his own allies,—Hiraux's born foes.
Hostilities began immediately the door of the organ-loft was shut. Hiraux expected he would be flogged again as before. But they could not repeat that punishment for want of rods. Still, a presentiment warned him to be more alarmed on account of the absence of rods than he would have been by their presence.
For as a matter of fact they did not intend to birch him, but to inflate him, and the operation was accomplished with the aid of the organ bellows.
This time Hiraux was not-blinded, but they very nearly killed him. They let him go when the operation was over, and he fled as far as he could from the accursed monastery, feeling more like an inflated balloon than a human being, till finally he fell, or rather he rolled, down at the foot of a tree.
It was more than a fortnight before he was completely disinflated.
In consequence of this little episode Hiraux became a grocer's lad; but no one can avoid his fate.