, and personalities were used. Even
at church, during the sermon, the faithful could not listen to
Van Stabel, the minister, in patience, and he threw himself about
in the pulpit and lectured his flock with far more than his usual
severity. At last this state of things brought about altercations
more grave, alas! than that between Gustos and Schut, and if they
did not require the interference of the authorities, it was
because the antagonists, after returning home, found there, with
its calm, forgetfulness of the offences offered and received.

This peculiarity could not be observed by these minds, which were
absolutely incapable of recognizing what was passing in them. One
person only in the town, he whose office the council had thought
of suppressing for thirty years, Michael Passauf, had remarked
that this excitement, which was absent from private houses,
quickly revealed itself in public edifices; and he asked himself,
not without a certain anxiety, what would happen if this
infection should ever develop itself in the family mansions, and
if the epidemic--this was the word he used--should extend
through the streets of the town. Then there would be no more
forgetfulness of insults, no more tranquillity, no intermission
in the delirium; but a permanent inflammation, which would
inevitably bring the Quiquendonians into collision with each
other.

"What would happen then?" Commissary Passauf asked himself in
terror. "How could these furious savages be arrested? How check
these goaded temperaments? My office would be no longer a
sinecure, and the council would be obliged to double my salary--
unless it should arrest me myself, for disturbing the public
peace!"

These very reasonable fears began to be realized. The infection
spread from 'change, the theatre, the church, the town-hall, the
academy, the market, into private houses, and that in less than a
fortnight after the terrible performance of the "Huguenots."

Its first symptoms appeared in the house of Collaert, the banker.

That wealthy personage gave a ball, or at least a dancing-party,
to the notabilities of the town. He had issued, some months
before, a loan of thirty thousand francs, three quarters of which
had been subscribed; and to celebrate this financial success, he
had opened his drawing-rooms, and given a party to his fellow-citizens.

Everybody knows that Flemish parties are innocent and tranquil
enough, the principal expense of which is usually