"Sapre!" said Duclosse the mealman of the monument; "it's like a timber
of cheese stuck up. What's that to make a fuss about?"

"Fig of Eden," muttered Jules Marmotte, with one eye on Jeanne, "any fool
could saw a better-looking thing out of ice!"

"Fish," said fat Caroche the butcher, "that Francois has a rattle in his
capote. He'd spend his time better chipping bones on my meat-block."

But Jeanne could not bear this--the greasy whopping butcher-man!

"What, what, the messy stupid Caroche, who can't write his name," she
said in a fury; "the sausage-potted Caroche, who doesn't remember that
Francois Lagarre made his brother's tombstone, and charged him nothing
for the verses he wrote for it, nor for the Agnus Dei he carved on it!
No, Caroche does not remember his brother Ba'tiste the fighter, as brave
as Caroche is a coward! He doesn't remember the verse on Ba'tiste's
tombstone, does he?"

Francois heard this speech, and his eyes lighted tenderly as he looked at
Jeanne: he loved this fury of defence and championship. Some one in the
crowd turned to him and asked him to say the verses. At first he would
not; but when Caroche said that it was only his fun, that he meant
nothing against Francois, the young man recited the words slowly--an
epitaph on one who was little better than a prize-fighter, a splendid
bully.

Leaning a hand against the white shaft of the Patriot's Memory, he said:

"Blows I have struck, and blows a-many taken,