"Hé, yes, are we to wait for the foreign bandits?"
"Javogues! Javogues!"
"Javogues, lead us!"
"Lead us, Javogues!"
Nicole felt through the child at her side a sudden trembling and drawing of breath. Then into the center of the suddenly quiet room lurched the squat figure, bareheaded, bare-armed, bare-chested but for a tattered shirt. He seemed rooted to the floor, like a mound transformed to human shape, quivering in the primeval mold and passions.
"Well, yes, I'll lead you!" The huge fist, describing a circle, crashed upon a table. "We're here to fight. We'll wait no longer. Hesitate and bandy words and deliberate whoever wants—we are not such! We have suffered and ached. We have been crushed to the ground, saddled to the earth,—we, human beings, like cattle, and we remember our wrongs. Fear? Neither God nor men do we fear. We came here, we, marching from Marseilles,—all the way from Marseilles,—to wipe out the accursed tyrants, to make things go faster, and, by God, they shall go!"
Nicole saw the hideous face transformed, lighted up with the glow of martyrdom. From lungs of leather there burst a welcoming response. Dossonville, facing the fanatic without a change of position, waited imperturbably the lull. Geneviève was breathing hard, in her excitement seizing the hand of her protectress.
"Bravo, patriot, you are eloquent!" came at last the calm answer of Dossonville. "But what can you do? March and be made into beefsteaks? The people, it is true, are hungry, but not a step will the sections move without Santerre. Will you march alone? What say you?"
"I say they are traitors who would halt us!" burst forth Javogues, glancing at the man who dared to jest with him.
"Meaning Santerre?"