voice, "Who said De Mauleon?--let me look on him:" and Victor, who had
strode on with slow lion-like steps, cleaving the crowd, turned, and saw
before him in the gleaming light a face, in which the bold frank,
intelligent aspect of former days was lost in a wild, reckless, savage
expression--the face of Armand Monnier.

"Ha! are you really Victor de Mauleon?" asked Monnier, not fiercely, but
under his breath,--in that sort of stage whisper which is the natural
utterance of excited men under the mingled influence of potent drink and
hoarded rage.

"Certainly; I am Victor de Mauleon."

"And you were in command of the -- company of the National Guard on the
30th of November at Champigny and Villiers?"

"I was."

"And you shot with your own hand an officer belonging to another company
who refused to join yours?"

"I shot a cowardly soldier who ran away from the enemy, and seemed a
ringleader of other runaways; and in so doing, I saved from dishonour the
best part of his comrades."

"The man was no coward. He was an enlightened Frenchman, and worth fifty
of such aristos as you; and he knew better than his officers that he was
to be led to an idle slaughter. Idle--I say idle. What was France the
better, how was Paris the safer, for the senseless butchery of that day?
You mutinied against a wiser general than Saint Trochu when you murdered