“Stow it! I say! pétrusquin!”
It was the Parigot wit replying to the wit of the provinces. The people had indeed arisen, but not as Vieillecloche would have wished. Instead of tearing up the paving-stones in honor of misunderstood Genius, and casting out the robbers of Glory, they were content to finish the punch and laugh in the face of the poet who bored them with his doggerel.
Besides, all these questions of signatures to pictures, of museum locks picked, and of Richard the Lion-hearted interested nobody.
But the banging of the door now began covering the bing! bing! of the tune. The public was going out in a mass. Vieillecloche tried to keep them by new flights of oratory which had no echo. Phil foresaw that the fierce tribune of the people would soon be making his prophetic gestures and proclaiming the eternal glory of the autochtones alone with his hurdy-gurdy, like St. Anthony with his pig. So Phil went away, followed to the very street by the exasperated grinding of the crank.
“What madness!” Phil said to himself. “Poufaille is certainly earning his money. He puts as much heat into it as if some one had stolen his own share of glory.” Poufaille a despoiled young genius! Phil, at the very idea, could not refrain from laughter.
“I must wait for him here,” he thought; “I shall see him when he comes out.”
He walked back and forth, but Poufaille did not come out. Still, Phil lost nothing by waiting. A final bang of the door made him turn his head and—what did he see but, arm in arm and laughing and talking together as gay as school-boys, Vieillecloche with Caracal!
“Well, I never! That’s too much!” Phil said, as he followed them with his eyes, trying to gather from their gestures the meaning of their conversation.
Vieillecloche lifted his hands, as if to show that they were empty. Caracal spoke low to him. Vieillecloche nodded approvingly.
“Those fine fellows must be preparing some stroke of business,” Phil said to himself, strongly interested. “Who knows if I do not play a part in it? It may be my turn—and Miss Ethel will no longer hear of Richard the Lion-hearted. The attacks will now fall on Caracal. Bravo! But perhaps Miss Ethel will not be displeased to learn of the friendship between Caracal and Vieillecloche. One might have supposed they would not be quite so thick! I don’t understand it,” was Phil’s conclusion. Moreover, he was accustomed never to take seriously what Caracal said or did.