"What the devil's that to do with you?" she replied. "Fire at it if you dare!"
The men shook their heads with contempt. None believed that they would fire on them.
"There are no balls in their cartridges," said Levaque.
"Are we Cossacks?" cried Maheu. "You don't fire against Frenchmen, by God!"
Others said that when people had been through the Crimean campaign they were not afraid of lead. And all continued to thrust themselves on to the rifles. If firing had begun at this moment the crowd would have been mown down.
In the front rank Mouquette was choking with fury, thinking that the soldiers were going to gash the women's skins. She had spat out all her coarse words at them, and could find no vulgarity low enough, when suddenly, having nothing left but that mortal offence with which to bombard the faces of the troop, she exhibited her backside. With both hands she raised her skirts, bent her back, and expanded the enormous rotundity.
"Here, that's for you! and it's a lot too clean, you dirty blackguards!"
She ducked and butted so that each might have his share, repeating after each thrust:
"There's for the officer! there's for the sergeant! there's for the soldiers!"
A tempest of laughter arose; Bébert and Lydie were in convulsions; Étienne himself, in spite of his sombre expectation, applauded this insulting nudity. All of them, the banterers as well as the infuriated, were now hooting the soldiers as though they had seen them stained by a splash of filth; Catherine only, standing aside on some old timber, remained silent with the blood at her heart, slowly carried away by the hatred that was rising within her.