Bang! It was the door slamming after Phil. He had now a right to the indignation and to the punch.
To tell the truth, there was little indignation in the hall, but a great deal of drinking and still more laughter. The public was made up of the idlers of the quarter, who had come to be amused. There were stable-boys and grooms in their great wooden shoes. The hall was infected with the smell of rum and tobacco. The voices, which but now had reached Phil’s ear in broken cries, rolled uninterruptedly. There was a continuous torrent of à bas! and vive! mingled with coarse wit and the clink of glasses. On the stage, mastering the tumult, Vieillecloche was speaking.
“Vive Vieillecloche!”
“Hear! hear!”
Bang!
The flights of oratory were lost amid the noise.
“Only yesterday,” Vieillecloche was saying, as he raised his voice, “not satisfied with attacking the majesty of universal suffrage, forgetful of the famous night of the 13th of March, foreigners feared not to brave the lion-people in its den! They banded together to despoil us of our dead—to soil the majesty of the tomb where our great ancestors—” Bang! said the door, cutting the discourse, “—ancestors sleep their eternal sleep! Do you not hear, O people, beneath the earth Richard the Lion-hearted roaring with wrath and shame? And to think there are French pens that treat us as visionaries—us who point out such attacks—and that pretend that we are wanting in courtesy by accusing our passing guests of an imaginary crime! This vile pen, citizens, I deliver it up to your indignant scorn. It is Caracal!”
“À bas Caracal!”
“Oho! I understand,” Phil said to himself. “Caracal has taken up the defense of the foreigners, as he promised Miss Rowrer the other day.”
“Eh bien!” Vieillecloche went on, “it shall not be said that Caracal has appealed in vain to our courtesy when he asks us to cease our political campaign against such foreigners, among whom there are ladies and even a young girl. We shall speak no more of Richard the Lion-hearted! All that is a blunder, a visionary’s dream, a groundless accusation. So be it! They ask for definite facts and not for vague accusations. Here is a definite fact! I accuse, formally, an American of stealing our ideas and stifling under the power of his cursed gold the outburst of a young genius, the hope of our glorious national art. They come to pillage even in their calm retreats, and to deprive of their labor the sons of the soil—les autochtones!—hum!—les autochtones!” (The word intoxicated Vieillecloche and he sent it bounding like a rubber ball.) “Yes, citizens! He has signed his work with a false name, he has picked the lock of our national museums, and, like a cuckoo, he has deposited in the bosom of glory the egg which he has not laid! And you suffer that, O people? Do you not feel the blush of shame mounting to your cheek? Take your clubs, Parisians—” and so he went on and on.