All together we go down by the fields where tranquil corn is growing, by the gardens and orchards where homely trees are making ready their offerings—­the scented blossom which lends, the fruit which gives itself.  They form an immense plain, sloping and darkling, with brown undulations under the blue which now alone is becoming green.  A little girl, who has come from the spring, puts down her bucket and stands at the roadside like a post, looking with all her eyes.  She looks at the marching multitude with beaming curiosity.  Her littleness embraces that immensity, because it is all a part of Order.  A peasant who has stuck to his work in spite of the festival and is bent over the deep shadows of his field, raises himself from the earth which is so like him, and turns towards the golden sun the shining monstrance of his face.

* * * * * *

But what is this—­this sort of madman, who stands in the middle of the road and looks as if, all by himself, he would bar the crowd’s passage?  We recognize Brisbille, swaying tipsily in the twilight.  There is an eddy and a muttering in the flow.

“D’you want to know where all that’s leading you?” he roars, and nothing more can be heard but his voice.  “It’s leading you to hell!  It’s the old rotten society, with the profiteering of all them that can, and the stupidity of the rest!  To hell, I tell you!  To-morrow look out for yourselves!  To-morrow!”

A woman’s voice cries from out of the shadows, in a sort of scuffle, “Be quiet, wicked man!  You’ve no right to frighten folks!”

But the drunkard continues to shout full-throated, “To-morrow!  To-morrow!  D’you think things will always go on like that?  You’re fit for killing!  To hell!”

Some people are impressed and disappear into the evening.  Those who are marking time around the obscure fanatic are growling, “He’s not only bad, he’s mad, the dirty beast!”

“It’s disgraceful,” says the young curate.

Brisbille goes up to him. “You tell me, then, you, what’ll happen very soon—­Jesuit, puppet, land-shark!  We know you, you and your filthy, poisonous trade!”

“Say that again!”

It was I who said that.  Leaving Marie’s arm instinctively I sprang forward and planted myself before the sinister person.  After the horrified murmur which followed the insult, a great silence had fallen on the scene.

Astounded, and his face suddenly filling with fear, Brisbille stumbles and beats a retreat.

The crowd regains confidence, and laughs, and congratulates me, and reviles the back of the man who is sinking in the stream.

“You were fine!” Marie said to me when I took her arm again, slightly trembling.

I returned home elated by my energetic act, still all of a tremor, proud and happy.  I have obeyed the prompting of my blood.  It was the great ancestral instinct which made me clench my fists and throw myself bodily, like a weapon, upon the enemy of all.