“The site of the hotel and an orchard on the Rue de Bonnière. I will buy the property—at any time. What do you say, Monsieur Lefèbre?”
“This is justice,” said the priest; “let us drive out the wolves.”
Philipon took the lead in the last act of this village drama. With his hammer over his shoulder he marshalled the crowd in the Rue de Picardie, made them a short speech, and then led them to the Place de l’Eglise. Bibi, Ledoux and Crapaud marched in a bunch in the centre of the crowd, guarded by the men. When they reached the Place de l’Eglise, Philipon called a halt. He saluted the church, and standing on a block of masonry, spoke these words to the people of Beaucourt:
“Here, in the centre of our village, we condemn these men, we cast them out. Let them be accursed. Let them never show their faces again in Beaucourt. Are we agreed?”
The crowd echoed his judgment.
“We cast them out,” was the burden of their cry.
They marched on down the Rue de Bonnière to Bibi’s buvette among the apple trees, and here the crowd halted again with great orderliness and in silence. A dozen or so of Goblet’s men were standing at the factory gate, and three or four were with Barbe in the buvette, but they were cowed, and made no attempt to interfere. Barbe, spitting like a cat, was brought down into the street. The tin of petroleum was taken from Pompom Crapaud, and Philipon, like some inexorable priest offering up a sacrifice, drenched the piled chairs and tables and set the place alight. The buvette blazed, and the crowd stood in silence, watching the flames, and knowing that an act of primitive justice had been done.
“Allons!”
Philipon marshalled them again, with Bibi, the woman and the two men at the head of the column. They moved on along the Bonnière road into the wilderness that was ceasing to be a wilderness, and where Nature and the hands of men were making the earth fruitful and good. They held on until they reached the dead trees at Les Ormes, and here they cast off Bibi and the others into the calm and acquiescent splendour of a summer twilight.
Philipon stood like a black figure of fate, holding up his hammer.