And the woman looked at the Hercules with interest.
Hardly had Moessard set foot to the ground, and before he could take refuge on the pavement, whither the black military caps of policemen could be seen hastening, Jansoulet threw himself upon him, lifted him by the back of the neck like a rabbit, and, careless of his protestations and his terrified stammerings:
“Yes, yes, I will give you satisfaction, you blackguard! But, first, I intend to do to you what is done to dirty beasts to prevent them from repeating the same offence.”
And roughly he set to work rubbing his nose and face all over with his newspaper, which he had rolled into a ball, stifling him, blinding him with it, and making scratches from which the blood trickled over his skin. The man was dragged from his hands, crimson, suffocated. A little more and he would have killed him.
The struggle over, pulling down his sleeves, adjusting his crumpled linen, picking up his portfolio out of which the papers of the Sarigue election were flying scattered even to the gutter, the Nabob answered the policemen who were asking him for his name in order to draw up a summons:
“Bernard Jansoulet, Deputy for Corsica.”
A public man!
Only then did he remember that he was one. Who would have suspected it, seeing him breathless and bare-headed, like a porter after a street fight, under the eager, coldly mocking glances of the crowd?