being
abroad after nine o'clock, against the orders of the Royal Court.

Many of the crowd knew him well enough by sight, but they were too
delirious to act with intelligence now. The dark cloud was lifting a
little from the sun, and dread of the Judgment Day was declining; but
as the pendulum swung back towards normal life again, it carried with it
the one virulent and common prejudice of the country--radical hatred of
the French--which often slumbered but never died.

The wife of an oyster-fisher from Rozel Bay, who lived in hourly enmity
with the oyster-fishers of Carteret, gashed his cheek with the shell of
an ormer. A potato-digger from Grouville parish struck at his head with
a hoe, for the Granvillais had crossed the strait to the island the
year before, to work in the harvest fields for a lesser wage than the
Jersiais, and this little French gentleman must be held responsible for
that. The weapon missed the Chevalier, but laid low a centenier, who,
though a municipal officer, had in the excitement lost his head like his
neighbours. This but increased the rage against the foreigner, and was
another crime to lay to his charge. A smuggler thereupon kicked him in
the side.

At that moment there came a cry of indignation from a girl at an upper
window of the Place. The Chevalier evidently knew her, for even in his
hard case he smiled; and then he heard another voice ring out over the
heads of the crowd, strong, angry, determined.

From the Rue d'Driere a tall athletic man was hurrying. He had on his
shoulders a workman's hand basket, from which peeped a ship-builder's
tools. Seeing the Chevalier's danger, he dropped his tool-basket through
the open window of a house and forced his way through the crowd, roughly
knocking from under them the feet of two or three ruffians who opposed
him. He reproached the crowd, he berated them, he handled them fiercely.
By a dexterous strength he caught the little gentleman up in his arms,
and, driving straight on to the open door of the smithy, placed him
inside, then blocked the passage with his own body.

It was a strange picture: the preacher in an ecstasy haranguing the
foolish rabble, who now realised, with an unbecoming joy, that the Last
Day was yet to face; the gaping, empty prison; the open windows crowded
with excited faces; the church bell from the Vier Marchi ringing an
alarm; Norman lethargy roused to froth and fury: one strong man holding
two hundred back!

Above