"Touch there, mother!" Their hands met with a clap. "Didn't I tell you, from the first, there is no God?"
"Aye, you did. He never feared, that man!"
"I say it now," Javogues cried, and thrice he shouted: "There is no God!"
Suddenly, flinging from the vat, he cleared a space about him with his arm, and, seizing Geneviève by the shoulder to steady himself, cried:
"If there is a God, let him strike me down. Let the moment decide between us. I defy him!"
He raised his fist to the sky and remained waiting, while more than one closed their eyes in terror. Then as the skies disgorged no thunderbolt, his arm relaxed, descending to his side, and the scornful lips with a sneer pronounced:
"Bah!"
"Vive Javogues!"
It was the voice of Cramoisin that acclaimed the victor.
Abandoning Geneviève, Javogues caught from the crowd a bakeress and a fille de joie and forced them into each other's arms, crying: