no bones of telling you of it."

Yells and cat-calls arose all around him, but the corporal continued
with extraordinary force and dignity:

"When a man has learning he shows it by his actions. If we are brutes
and peasants, you owe us the benefit of your example, since you know
more than we do. Take up your musket, or _Nom de Dieu!_ I will have
you shot the first halt we make."

Maurice was daunted; he stooped and raised the weapon in his hand.
Tears of rage stood in his eyes. He reeled like a drunken man as he
labored onward, surrounded by his comrades, who now were jeering at
him for having yielded. Ah, that Jean! he felt that he should never
cease to hate him, cut to the quick as he had been by that bitter
lesson, which he could not but acknowledge he had deserved. And when
Chouteau, marching at his side, growled: "When corporals are that way,
we just wait for a battle and blow a hole in 'em," the landscape
seemed red before his eyes, and he had a distinct vision of himself
blowing Jean's brains out from behind a wall.

But an incident occurred to divert their thoughts; Loubet noticed that
while the dispute was going on Pache had also abandoned his musket,
laying it down tenderly at the foot of an embankment. Why? What were
the reasons that had made him resist the example of his comrades in
the first place, and what were the reasons that influenced him now? He
probably could not have told himself, nor did he trouble his head
about the matter, chuckling inwardly with silent enjoyment, like a
schoolboy who, having long been held up as a model for his mates,
commits his first offense. He strode along with a self-contented,