"Yes!—so!—death!—yes!—death!—you!—beast!—you devil!"
With each energetic word went a wild sweep of the claws or came a wisp of beard.
The man bellowed with pain. The unexpected fury of her onslaught, the general mêlée of close quarters, the instinct of protection, contributed to prevent the man from simply braining her with his "casse-tête." He was a lion against a hornet, powerless to punish his puny assailant. As he finally broke away, she suddenly whirled and delivered beneath the arm that shielded his eyes a kick that half choked him with his own teeth.
Blinded with blood and howling with pain, the wretch plunged headlong through the café front amid a crash of falling glass.
In the mean time, while this little curtain-raiser had been getting under way, there was still another and more important drama in active preparation.
The police, as if to lend such material aid to the royalist cause as lay in their power, and to assist in the punishment of those misguided Frenchmen who took the words "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité," inscribed over the doors of the public hall, in a too literal sense, had violently closed those doors against the latter and by cunningly arranged barriers driven the unsuspecting Dreyfusardes down upon their armed enemies. It was a most admirably arranged plot to destroy the public peace, and reflected credit upon the clerico-royalist-military council that had planned it.
Before the indignant republicans had begun to realize the character of the trap set for them they found themselves hemmed in on three sides by the police and attacked by the combination of hostile forces on the other side.
The latter had been quietly assembled in the vicinity in anticipation of this dénouement. They were led by Senators and Deputies wearing the official scarf of their high legislative function. This at once afforded the latter reasonable immunity from arrest, and served to encourage and assure those accustomed to look for some shadow of authority to conceal or excuse the evil of their deeds.
The French Senator or Deputy who leads street rioters against a peaceable assemblage of his fellow-citizens one day and serenely sits in national legislative deliberation the next day is the faithful representative of a constituency as far removed from the American type of citizenship as the French legislator is from our national legislator.
With shouts of "Vive l'armée!" "À bas les vendus!" "Vive France aux Français!" "À bas les Juifs!" the waiting combination, or "nationalistes," fell upon their victims with fist, heel, and club. This was not as a body, the assailants being cleverly scattered everywhere through the crowd, and assaulting individually and supporting each other where resistance was encountered. As many were mere spectators, they were compelled to declare themselves or come in for a share of the drubbing, though this opportunity for escape was not always offered or accepted.