CHAPTER VII


PUPPETS


"Ah! It goes. It goes already!"

The speaker--the Citizen Morot--slowly rubbed his white hands one over
the other.

He was standing at the window of a small house in an insignificant
street on the southern side of the Seine. He was remarkably calm--quite
the calmest man within the radius of a mile; for the insignificant
little street was in an uproar. There was a barricade at each end of it.
Such a barricade as Parisians love. It was composed of a few overturned
omnibuses; for the true Parisian is a cynic. He likes overturned things,
and he loves to see objects of peace converted to purposes of war. He is
not content that ploughshares be beaten into swords. He prefers
altar-rails. And so this little street was blocked at either end by a
barricade of overturned omnibuses, of old hampers and empty boxes, of a
few loads of second-hand bricks and paving-stones brought from the scene
of some drainage operations round the corner.

In the street between the barricades, surged, hooted, and yelled that
wildest and most dangerous of incomprehensibles--a Paris mob.