ted to say, and goes off reeling, with an odor of
hatred and wine, and his face slashed with red patches.

"That anarchist!" said Crillon, in disgust; "loathsome notions, now,
aren't they? Ah! who'll rid us of him and his alcoholytes?" he adds,
as he offers me his hand. "Good-night. I'm always saying to the Town
Council, 'You must give 'em clink,' I says, 'that gang of Bolshevists,
for the slightest infractionment of the laws against drunkenness.'
Yes, indeed! There's that Jean Latrouille in the Town Council, eh?
They talk about keeping order, but as soon as it's a question of
a-doing of it, they seem like a cold draught."

The good fellow is angry. He raises his great fist and shakes it in
space like a medieval mace. Pointing where Brisbille has just plunged
floundering into the night, he says, "That's what Socialists are,--the
conquering people what can't stand up on their legs! I may be a
botcher in life, but I'm for peace and order. Good-night, good-night.
Is she well, Aunt Josephine? I'm for tranquillity and liberty and
order. That's why I've always kept clear of their crowd. A bit since,
I saw her trotting past, as vivacious as a young girl,--but there, I
talk and I talk!"

He enters his shop, but turns on his heel and calls me back, with a
mysterious sign. "You know they've all arrived up yonder at the
castle?" Respect has subdued his voice; a vision is absorbing him of
the lords and ladies of the manor, and as he leaves me he bows,
instinctively.

His shop is a narrow glass cage, which is added to our house, like a
family relation. Within I can just make out the strong, plebeian
framework of Crillon himself, upright beside a serrated heap of ruins,
over which a candle is enthroned. The light which falls on his
accumulated tools and on those hanging from the wall makes a decoration
obscurely golden around the picture of this wise man; this soul all
innocent of envious demands, turning again to his botching, as his
father and grandfather botched.

I have mounted the steps and pushed our door; the gray door, whose only
relief is the key. The door goes in grumblingly, and makes way for me
into the dark passage, which was formerly paved, though now the traffic
of soles has kneaded it with earth, and changed it into a footpath. My
forehead strikes the lamp, which is hooked on the wall; it is out,
oozing oil, and it stinks. One never sees that lamp, and always bangs
it.

And though I had hurri