"The unions, monsieur----" he cries to me in the wind, "why, it's
dangerous to point at them. You haven't the right to think any
more--that's what they call liberty. If you're in _them_, you've got
to be agin the parsons--(I'm willing, but what's that got to do with
labor?)--and there's something more serious," the lamp-man adds, in a
suddenly changed voice, "you've got to be agin the army,--the _army_!"

And now the poor slave of the lamp seems to take a resolution. He
stops and devotionally rolling his Don Quixote eyes in his gloomy,
emaciated face, he says, "_I'm_ always thinking about something. What?
you'll say. Well, here it is. I belong to the League of Patriots."

As they brighten still more, his eyes are like two live embers in the
darkness, "Déroulède!" he cries; "that's the man--he's _my_ God!"

Pétrolus raises his voice and gesticulates; he makes great movements in
the night at the vision of his idol, to whom his leanness and his long
elastic arms give him some resemblance. "He's for war; he's for
Alsace-Lorraine, that's what he's for; and above all, he's for nothing
else. Ah, that's all there is to it! The Boches have got to disappear
off the earth, else it'll be us. Ah, when they talk politics to _me_,
I ask 'em, 'Are you for Déroulède, yes or no?' That's enough! I got
my schooling any old how, and I know next to nothing but I reckon it's
grand, only to think like that, and in the Reserves I'm
adjutant[1]--almost an officer, monsieur, just a lamp-man as I am!"

[Footnote 1: A non-com., approximately equivalent to regimental
sergeant-major.--Tr.]