the invader had been expelled from the house opposite. The shrubs under
the archway swayed and burst apart, as that unwelcome guest was
shot out of them like a cannon-ball.

He was a sturdy figure in a small and tilted Tyrolean felt hat,
a figure that had indeed something generally Tyrolean about it.
The man's shoulders were big and broad, but his legs were neat and active
in knee-breeches and knitted stockings. His face was brown like a nut;
he had very bright and restless brown eyes; his dark hair was brushed back
stiffly in front and cropped close behind, outlining a square and
powerful skull; and he had a huge black moustache like the horns of a bison.
Such a substantial head is generally based on a bull neck; but this was
hidden by a big coloured scarf, swathed round up the man's ears
and falling in front inside his jacket like a sort of fancy waistcoat.
It was a scarf of strong dead colours, dark red and old gold and purple,
probably of Oriental fabrication. Altogether the man had something
a shade barbaric about him; more like a Hungarian squire than
an ordinary French officer. His French, however, was obviously
that of a native; and his French patriotism was so impulsive
as to be slightly absurd. His first act when he burst out of the archway
was to call in a clarion voice down the street: "Are there any
Frenchmen here?" as if he were calling for Christians in Mecca.

Armagnac and Brun instantly stood up; but they were too late.
Men were already running from the street corners; there was a small
but ever-clustering crowd. With the prompt French instinct for
the politics of the street, the man with the black moustache had already
run across to a corner of the cafe, sprung on one of the tables,
and seizing a branch of chestnut to steady himself, shouted
as Camille Desmoulins once shouted when he scattered the oak-leaves