Bibi held up a fist.
“Listen. Cordonnier there heard the man talking German. When he told me that, I thought I would try it myself, and one night I got Mademoiselle Barbe to put me under their window. When a man is shut up in a house with a woman, does he talk German just for the fun of it?”
“You heard him?”
“I did. And I can tell you my blood felt hot; it made me think of those nights when one heard the swine talking in the trenches.”
It was Lazare Ledoux who jumped up and called for a crusade. He was the torch-bearer, the inflamer of mobs.
“Come on! We’ll cut the woman’s hair off, and kick the fellow into the street. Come on!”
At the Café de la Victoire the peaceful details of an idle summer day were proofs of how little this storm-burst was expected. Manon had run down to Mère Vitry’s with a few lettuces and a basket of beans, and had stayed chatting with the old lady. Marie Castener was washing up the dishes. Brent, in his shirt-sleeves, had pulled the arm-chair to the open window, and was lighting a pipe before sitting down to read a day-old copy of Le Petit Journal. Someone was splitting firewood in a barn across the way, and the steady chunk-chunk of the hatchet was almost as rhythmic as the ticking of a big clock.
Brent had begun to read an article on the coal problem in France, an article that contained some very bitter criticism of the British miner, when an unusual and yet familiar sound drew his attention from the paper. Back in his brain were many memories, sense impressions left by the war, and this particular sound reminded him of a company of infantry marching into its village billets. There was the unforgettable pounding of heavy boots on the pavé, and yet this noise was different. Troops marched in step. This footwork belonged to the undisciplined and scrambling rush of a crowd.
Paul turned in his chair and, leaning sideways, looked along the street. He remained quite motionless for some seconds, staring at this little mob of men debouching from the Rue Romaine. The two leading figures gave Brent the first hint of how the coming of this crowd might be a threat to the Café de la Victoire. Lazare Ledoux had blind Bibi by the hand, a Bibi whose face looked white and fatal beside the inflamed faces of the other men.
Brent stood up. His jaw and mouth seemed to set into hard, bleak lines as he saw the wild eyes of these men turned towards the house. Lazare Ledoux caught sight of him standing at the open window, and Ledoux’s mouth became a red-edged splodge of howling blackness.