At that moment a stir was apparent along the ramparts.  The players broke off their game and the two friends lifted their heads.  It was a train of wounded going by.  Under the curtains of the lumbering ambulance-waggons marked with the Geneva red cross could be seen livid faces tied up in bloodstained bandages.  Linesmen and mobiles tramped behind, their arms hanging in slings.  The Nationals proffered them handfuls of tobacco and asked for news.  But the wounded men only shook their heads and trudged stolidly on their way.

“Aren’t we to have some fighting soon as well as other fellows?” cried Garneret.

To which Servien growled back: 

“We must first put down the traitors and incapables who govern us, proclaim the Commune and march all together against the Prussians.”

XXIX

Hatred of the Empire which had left him to rot in a back-shop and a school class-room, love of the Republic that was to bring every blessing in its train had, since the proclamation of September 4, raised Jean Servien’s warlike enthusiasm to fever heat.  But he soon wearied of the long drills in the Luxembourg gardens and the hours of futile sentry-go behind the fortifications.  The sight of tipsy shopkeepers in a frenzy of foolish ardour, half drink, half patriotism, sickened him, and this playing at soldiers, tramping through the mud on an empty stomach, struck him as after all an odious, ugly business.

Luckily Garneret was his comrade in the ranks, and Servien felt the salutary effect of that well-stored, well-ordered mind, the servant of duty and stern reality.  Only this saved him from a passion, as futile in the past as it was hopeless in the future, which was assuming the dangerous character of a mental disease.

He had not seen Gabrielle again for a long time.  The theatres were shut; all he knew, from the newspapers, was that she was nursing the wounded in the theatre ambulance.  He had no wish now to meet her.

When he was not on duty, he used to lie in bed and read (it was a hard winter and wood was scarce), or else scour the boulevards and mix with the throng of idlers in search of news.  One evening, early in January, as he was passing the corner of the Rue Drouot, his attention was attracted by the clamour of voices, and he saw Monsieur Bargemont being roughly handled by an ill-looking gang of National Guards.

“I am a better Republican than any of you,” the big man was vociferating; “I have always protested against the infamies of the Empire.  But when you shout:  Vive Blanqui!... excuse me...  I have a right to shout:  Vive Jules Favre! excuse me, I have a perfect right——­” But his voice was drowned in a chorus of yells.  Men in kepis shook their fists at him, shouting:  “Traitor! no surrender! down with Badinguet!” His broad face, distraught with terror, still bore traces of its erstwhile look of smug effrontery.  A girl in the crowd shrieked:  “Throw him in the river!” and a hundred voices took up the cry.  But just at that moment the crowd swayed back violently and Monsieur Bargemont darted into the forecourt of the Mairie.  A squad of police officers received him in their ranks and closed in round him.  He was saved!