“It is time we did something with that drinking shop.”
“I hear they are sending us two gendarmes.”
“Gendarmes! We can manage our own affairs. You wait. We are ready to give those fellows a lesson.”
The singing grew louder as they neared the end of the Rue de Picardie, and it appeared that Monsieur Goblet’s young men were coming down the Rue Romaine. Manon was holding to Paul’s arm. She was not frightened, but she was serious.
“We could do so well without them,” she said.
Philipon grunted.
“Don’t worry, madame. People who make the most noise are always the biggest cowards.”
When they reached the end of the garden wall Paul lifted Manon up on the raised path, but he and Philipon kept to the road. About a dozen “roughs,” with arms linked together, had swung round the corner out of the Rue Romaine and were dancing the can-can in the roadway below the café. They were rowdy and derisive, shouting and kicking up their heels in front of the house.
“Hallo—hallo!”
“Profiteers! Stuck-up pigs!”