n the hoardings.

These were spectacles of which cool reason cannot approve and they
were fit causes for grief to the municipal authorities, who desired to
preserve the good order of the roads and streets. But, what was sadder
for a man of heart was the sight or the canting humbugs, who, from
fear of blows, kept at an equal distance from the two camps, and who,
although they allowed their selfishness and cowardice to be visible,
claimed admiration for the generosity of their sentiments and the
nobility of their souls. They rubbed their eyes with onions, gaped like
whitings, blew violently into their handkerchiefs, and, bringing their
voices out of the depths of their stomachs, groaned forth: "O Penguins,
cease these fratricidal struggles; cease to rend your mother's bosom!"
As if men could live in society without disputes and without quarrels,
and as if civil discords were not the necessary conditions of national
life and progress. They showed themselves hypocritical cowards by
proposing a compromise between the just and the unjust, offending
the just in his rectitude and the unjust in his courage. One of these
creatures, the rich and powerful Machimel, a champion coward, rose upon
the town like a colossus of grief; his tears formed poisonous lakes at
his feet and his sighs capsized the boats of the fishermen.

During these stormy nights Bidault-Coquille at the top of his old
steam-engine, under the serene sky, boasted in his heart, while the
shooting stars registered themselves upon his photographic plates. He
was fighting for justice. He loved and was loved with a sublime passion.
Insult and calumny raised him to the clouds. A caricature of him in
company with those of Colomban, Kerdanic, and Colonel Hastaing was to be
seen in the newspaper kiosks. The Anti-Pyrotists proclaimed that he
had received fifty thousand francs from the big Jewish financiers.
The reporters of the militarist sheets held interviews regarding his
scientific knowledge with official scholars, who declared he had no
knowledge of the stars, disputed his most solid observations, denied
his most certain discoveries, and condemned his most ingenious and most
fruitful hypotheses. He exulted under these flattering blows of hatred
and envy.

He contemplated the black immensity pierced by a multitude of lights,
without giving a thought to all the heavy slumbers, cruel insomnias,
vain dreams, spoilt pleasures, and infinitely diverse miseries that a
great