Dodichet pretended not to hear, and insisted on continuing his air; but the audience made a terrible uproar, and some young men in the pit threw raw potatoes and copper sous at the débutant.
"Ah! this is the way you treat me, is it?" he cried; "well, you're a pack of brazen-faced hounds!"
And with that, he turned his back on the audience, made a most contemptuous gesture, and rushed into the wings. But the gesture he had indulged in and the words he had uttered excited the wrath of the spectators to the highest pitch; they jumped down among the musicians, climbed upon the stage, and scoured it in all directions.
"We'll teach the fellow to show such disrespect to the public," they said; "it's a hiding, not hisses, that Signor Rouladini needs."
And the prompter in his hole rubbed his hands in glee.
The manager tried in vain to pacify the audience; they would not listen to him. But Dodichet's comrades, seeing that the matter was becoming serious, hustled him out of the theatre by a side door, with a policeman's cloak over his shoulders and a fireman's helmet on his head.
"Leave the town at once," they said to him. "Don't go back to your hotel, for you won't be safe there. Hurry to the station, and skip! the Bretons don't understand a joke; they might do you a serious injury."
Bewildered by what had happened to him, Dodichet found himself in the street with no clear idea how he had got there. Luckily for him, he invariably carried his purse in his belt, so that he would always be able to take something. He soon decided what course to take. Wrapping himself in the cloak they had thrown over his shoulders, and fixing the fireman's helmet firmly on his head, he made for the railway station.
"The provinces are not enlightened enough to appreciate me," he said to himself; "I will return to Paris. I have two hundred francs in my purse still, and with that I can await events."
He jumped into a carriage in which there were three women. His strange costume frightened them, and they started to change carriages; but Dodichet reassured them by saying that he had just left a fancy-dress ball, and that he had retained his disguise on a wager. But, at the first stop, he purchased other clothes, not daring to return to Paris as Joconde, a policeman, and a fireman all in one.