"Oh, messeigneurs, look at that hero yonder! Oppressed by his visor, he is carrying his casque front side back and his sabre on his shoulder!"
"And that one, who holds his sword like a wax-taper! Guess he is a Pope's soldier!"
"And yonder goes one who came near putting out the eye of his neighbor with his pike! What a ridiculous set! What silly people!"
"For heaven's sake, messeigneurs, are you not frozen with terror at the thought that, some day, we may find ourselves face to face and lance in hand, with this bourgeoisie, this formidable rabble-rout of shaven fronts, big paunches and flat feet?"
At first, patiently endured by the communiers, these insults, accentuated with outbursts of contemptuous laughter and disdainful gestures, ended, nevertheless, by irritating the more impetuous. Dull murmurs rose from the crowd; the procession halted, despite the entreaties of Fergan, who urged upon the militiamen the silence of contempt. Some threatened the episcopals with their fists, others with their arms; but their tormentors redoubled their gibes at the sight of such signs of irritation. Suddenly John Molrain, the Mayor, rushing to one of the stone benches, common near the doors of dwellings to assist riders in mounting their horses, jumped upon it, ordered silence, and addressed the crowd in a sonorous voice, that reached the ears of the episcopals:
"Brothers, and all those who have taken the oath of the Commune of Laon, make no reply to impotent insults! Let any dare attack the Commune with deeds and not with words, then will we, your Mayor and Councilmen, summon the offender before our tribunal, and justice will be enforced upon our enemies—prompt and energetic justice! Until then, let us answer all provocation with disdain. The resolute man, strong in his rights, despises insults. At the hour of judgment, he condemns and punishes!"
These wise and measured words quieted the excitement of the crowd, but they also reached the ears of the nobles, assembled on the terrace of the house of the seigneur of Haut-Pourcin, and added fuel to their rage. They menaced the communiers with their canes and swords, while redoubling their gibes. "Your swords are not long enough, they do not reach us!" Colombaik cried out to them, while passing under the balcony with his division of the militia. "Come down into the street! We shall then see whether iron is heavier in the hands of a bourgeois than in that of a knight!"
This challenge was answered by the episcopals with fresh insults. However, they dared not descend into the street, where they would have been seized and taken prisoners by the militia. For a moment delayed on its march, the procession resumed its way and arrived at the place of the Town Hall, a monument dear to the artisans and other townsmen.
The edifice, a spacious and handsome structure recently erected, formed an oblong square. Elaborate sculptures ornamented its facade and the lintels of its numerous windows and architrave, which consisted of three ogive arcades sustained by elegant sheaves of stone columns. But the portion of the edifice upon which particular care had been devoted, both in point of construction and ornamentation, was the tower of the belfry and the campanile, where hung the bell. This tower, proudly rising above the roof, stood out in full view. From tier to tier a slender sheet supported rounds of small columns surmounted with ogives chiseled in trefoil, so that across the network of chiseled stone the spiral of the staircase was visible that led up to the campanile, veiled in white cloth up to the moment when the procession issued upon the place. When the covering dropped off and the campanile stood unveiled, a shout of admiration and patriotic enthusiasm rose from all breasts. Nothing so airy as that campanile, looking like a gilded cage of iron, whose outlines stood out against the blue of the sky like a lace-work of gold, glittering in the rays of the sun. Above the dazzling dome, the communal banner floated in the spring breeze of that beautiful April morning. The enthusiastic cheers of the crowds rose again and again, and the north wind must have carried to the ears of the episcopals the cry, a thousand times repeated: