pot-house assemblage; "it is a beastly thing to send a lot of brave
boys to have their brains blown out for a dirty little quarrel about
which they don't know the first word."

And much more in the same strain. He was the type of the Belleville
agitator, a lazy, dissipated mechanic, perverting his fellow workmen,
constantly spouting the ill-digested odds and ends of political
harangues that he had heard, belching forth in the same breath the
loftiest sentiments and the most asinine revolutionary clap-trap. He
knew it all, and tried to inoculate his comrades with his ideas,
especially Lapoulle, of whom he had promised to make a lad of spirit.

"Don't you see, old man, it's all perfectly simple. If Badinguet and
Bismarck have a quarrel, let 'em go to work with their fists and fight
it out and not involve in their row some hundreds of thousands of men
who don't even know one another by sight and have not the slightest
desire to fight."

The whole car laughed and applauded, and Lapoulle, who did not know
who Badinguet[*] was, and could not have told whether it was a king or
an emperor in whose cause he was fighting, repeated like the gigantic
baby that he was:

[*] Napoleon III.

"Of course, let 'em fight it out, and take a drink together
afterward."

But Chouteau had turned to Pache, whom he now proceeded to take in
hand.