y to the other
everybody was playing soldier.

Cap-makers became colonels, fulfilling the duties of generals; revolvers
and swords were displayed around big, peaceful stomachs wrapped
in flaming red belts; little tradesmen became warriors commanding
battalions of brawling volunteers, and swearing like pirates in order to
give themselves some prestige.

The sole fact of handling firearms crazed these people, who up to
that time had only handled scales, and made them, without any reason,
dangerous to all. Innocent people were shot to prove that they knew how
to kill; in forests which had never seen a Prussian, stray dogs, grazing
cows and browsing horses were killed.

Each one thought himself called upon to play a great part in military
affairs. The cafes of the smallest villages, full of uniformed
tradesmen, looked like barracks or hospitals.

The town of Canneville was still in ignorance of the maddening news from
the army and the capital; nevertheless, great excitement had prevailed
for the last month, the opposing parties finding themselves face to
face.

The mayor, Viscount de Varnetot, a thin, little old man, a conservative,
who had recently, from ambition, gone over to the Empire, had seen a
determined opponent arise in Dr. Massarel, a big, full-blooded man,
leader of the Republican party of the neighborhood, a high official in
the local masonic lodge, president of the Agricultural Society and of
the firemen's banquet and the organizer of the rural militia which was
to save the country.

In two weeks, he had managed to gather together sixty-three volunteers,
fathers of families, prudent farmers and town merchants, and every
morning he would drill them in the square in front of the town-hall.

When, perchance, the mayor would come to the municipal building,
Commander Massarel, girt with pistols, would pass proudly in front of
his troop, his sword in his hand, and make all of them cry: "Long live
the Fatherland!" And it had been noticed that this cry excited the
little viscount, who probably saw in it a menace, a threat, as well as
the odious memory of the great Revolution.

On the morning of the fifth of September, the doctor, in full uniform,
his revolver on the table, was giving a consultation to an old couple,
a farmer who had been suffering from varicose veins for the last seven
years and had waited until his wife had them also, before he would
consult the doctor, when the postman brought in the paper.