But they were not alone there. From several quarters came sharp rejoinders of "Vive la justice!" "Vive la république!" "Vive la France!"
While these cries seemed harmless if not proper, they were judged seditious by the police, who made a dash for those who uttered them. In another instant the man with the red turban would have saved the agents the trouble of arresting the nearest person had not Jean grasped the bâton. The brute face had taken on a flush of red ferocity. His blow restrained, the man spat in the face of his intended victim and strode on.
"Not yet, my friend!" exclaimed the student leader. "What! precipitate a fight here! Madness! We should be ridden down within three minutes! The government will be sure to protect the Opéra."
"Yes; you are always right, mon enfant," growled the man.
Meanwhile, the unfortunate Parisian who wanted "justice" got it; being dragged off by two police agents, who took turns in kicking and cuffing their prisoner on the way to the dépôt. There he was charged with uttering seditious cries calculated to lead to a breach of the peace.
Gathering confidence from immunity, however, the manifestants soon ceased to observe this respect for public opinion. In Boulevard Haussmann they got out from the eye of the military. They began to hustle those who happened to get in their way. Those who were not sufficiently explicit in their views were compelled to cry "Vive l'armée;" whoever refused was promptly knocked on the head.
"Monsieur Front de Bœuf," said Jean Marot to his companion, who had narrowly missed spattering the young leader with the brains of a misguided Dreyfusarde, "if you will strike less heavily you will longer remain with us, and possibly for a time escape the guillotine. Let us do no murder, mon ami. Your stick is heavy."
"That's so; but it is a lovely stick all the same," replied the man, with a satisfied air, as he wiped the blood from his hands upon his blouse.
Then for the first time Jean noticed that this blouse bore many old stains of the same sanguinary color. Undoubtedly it was blood. Human? Faugh!
Jean saw around him other men of the same type, red-faced and strong-limbed, mentally as well as physically saturated with the brutality of their calling. He thought of Mlle. Fouchette. It was true, then, that these human brutes from the abattoirs were here. That other type, the "camelot,"—he of the callous, cadaverous face, thinly clad body, cunning eyes, husky lungs,—was more familiar.