Beausire lifted his head and continued his descent.
At the last step he touched his hand to his red cap, and in an emphasized military tone, said:
"I say, brother-officer, can a comrade go out or not?"
"You are going out," returned Pitou; "only, in the first place, you must submit to a little formality."
"Hem! what is it, my handsome captain?"
"You will have to be searched."
"Search a patriot, a capturer of the tyrants' den, a man who has been exterminating aristocrats?"
"That's the order; so, comrade, since you are a fellow-soldier," said the National Guardsman, "stick your big toad-sticker in its sheath, now that all the aristos are slain, and let the search be done in good part, or, if not, I shall be driven to employ force."
"Force?" said Beausire. "Ha! you talk in this strain because you have twenty men at your back, my pretty captain; but if you and I were alone together—"
"If we were alone together, citizen," returned the man from the country, "I'd show you what I should do. In this way, I should seize your left wrist with my right hand; with my left, I should wrench your saber from your grasp, like this, and I should snap it under my foot, just like this, as being no longer worthy of handling by an honest man after a thief."