sagacity with which he had opposed the war, he seemed certain, when peace
and order became established, of a brilliant position and career in a
future administration: not less because he had steadfastly kept aloof
from the existing Government, which it was rumoured, rightly or
erroneously, that he had been solicited to join; and from every
combination of the various democratic or discontented factions.

Quitting these more distinguished associates, he took his way alone
towards the ramparts. The day was closing; the thunders of the cannon
were dying down.

He passed by a wine-shop round which were gathered many of the worse
specimens of the _Moblots_ and National Guards, mostly drunk, and loudly
talking in vehement abuse of generals and officers and commissariat. By
one of the men, as he came under the glare of a petroleum lamp (there was
gas no longer in the dismal city), he was recognised as the commander who
had dared to insist on discipline, and disgrace honest patriots who
claimed to themselves the sole option between fight and flight. The man
was one of those patriots--one of the new recruits whom Victor had
shamed and dismissed for mutiny and cowardice. He made a drunken plunge
at his former chief, shouting, "A bas Pai-isto! Comrades, this is the
coquin De Mauleon who is paid by the Prussians for getting us killed: a
la lanterne!" "A la lanterne!" stammered and hiccupped others of the
group; but they did not stir to execute their threat. Dimly seen as the
stern face and sinewy form of the threatened man was by their drowsied
eyes, the name of De Mauleon, the man without fear of a foe, and without
ruth for a mutineer, sufficed to protect him from outrage; and with a
slight movement of his arm that sent his denouncer reeling against the
lamp-post, De Mauleon passed on:--when another man, in the uniform of a
National Guard, bounded from the door of the tavern, crying with a loud