intoxicated with the spectacle. Now that each battalion
consisted of only a few insurgents he had to name them yet more hastily,
and his precipitancy gave him the appearance of one in a frenzy.

"Ah! Miette," he continued, "what a fine march past! Rozan! Vernoux!
Corbiere! And there are more still, you'll see. These have only got
scythes, but they'll mow down the troops as close as the grass in their
meadows--Saint-Eutrope! Mazet! Les Gardes, Marsanne! The whole north
side of the Seille! Ah, we shall be victorious! The whole country is
with us. Look at those men's arms, they are hard and black as iron.
There's no end to them. There's Pruinas! Roches Noires! Those last
are smugglers: they are carrying carbines. Still more scythes and
pitchforks, the contingents of country folk are still passing.
Castel-le-Vieux! Sainte-Anne! Graille! Estourmel! Murdaran!"

His voice was husky with emotion as he finished naming these men, who
seemed to be borne away by a whirlwind as fast as he enumerated them.
Erect, with glowing countenance, he pointed out the several contingents
with a nervous gesture. Miette followed his movements. The road below
attracted her like the depths of a precipice. To avoid slipping down
the incline she clung to the young man's neck. A strange intoxication
emanated from those men, who themselves were inebriated with clamour,
courage, and confidence. Those beings, seen athwart a moonbeam, those
youths and those men in their prime, those old people brandishing
strange weapons and dressed in the most diverse costumes, from working
smock to middle class overcoat, those endless rows of heads, which
the hour and the circumstances endowed with an expression of fanatical
energy and enthusiasm, gradually appeared to the girl like a whirling,
impetuous torrent. At certain moments she fancied they were not of
themselves moving, that they were really being carried away by the force
of the "Marseillaise," by that hoarse, sonorous chant. She could not
distinguish any conversation, she heard but a continuous volume of
sound, alternating from bass to shrill notes, as piercing as nails
driven into one's flesh. This roar of revolt, this call to combat,
to death, with its outbursts of indignation, its burning thirst for
liberty, its remarkable blending of bloodthirsty and sublime impulses,
unceasingly smote her heart, penetrating more deeply at each fierce
outburst, and filling her with the voluptuous pangs of a virgin martyr