This was the signal for a terrible struggle.  The combatants fell in thousands, and their bodies formed howling and moving mounds on top of which fresh champions gripped each other by the throats.  Women, eager, pale, and dishevelled, with clenched teeth and frantic nails, rushed on the man, in transports that, in the brilliant light of the public square, gave to their faces expressions unsurpassed even in the shade of curtains and in the hollows of pillows.  They were going to seize Colomban, to bite him, to strangle, dismember and rend him, when Maniflore, tall and dignified in her red tunic, stood forth, serene and terrible, confronting these furies who recoiled from before her in terror.  Colomban seemed to be saved; his partisans succeeded in clearing a passage for him through the Place du Palais and in putting him into a cab stationed at the corner of the Pont-Vieux.  The horse was already in full trot when Prince des Boscenos, Count Clena, and M. de La Trumelle knocked the driver off his seat.  Then, making the animal back and pushing the spokes of the wheels, they ran the vehicle on to the parapet of the bridge, whence they overturned it into the river amid the cheers of the delirious crowd.  With a resounding splash a jet of water rose upwards, and then nothing but a slight eddy was to be seen on the surface of the stream.

Almost immediately comrades Dagobert and Varambille, with the help of the seven hundred disguised Pyrotists, sent Prince des Boscenos head foremost into a river-laundry in which he was lamentably swallowed up.

Serene night descended over the Place du Palais and shed silence and peace upon the frightful ruins with which it was strewed.  In the mean time, Colomban, three thousand yards down the stream, cowering beside a lame old horse on a bridge, was meditating on the ignorance and injustice of crowds.

“The business,” said he to himself, “is even more troublesome than I believed.  I foresee fresh difficulties.”

He got up and approached the unhappy animal.

“What have you, poor friend, done to them?” said he.  “It is on my account they have used you so cruelly.”

He embraced the unfortunate beast and kissed the white star on his forehead.  Then he took him by the bridle and led him, both of them limping, trough the sleeping city to his house, where sleep soon allowed them to forget mankind.

IX.  FATHER DOUILLARD

In their infinite gentleness and at the suggestion of the common father of the faithful, the bishops, canons, vicars, curates, abbots, and friars of Penguinia resolved to hold a solemn service in the cathedral of Alca, and to pray that Divine mercy would deign to put an end to the troubles that distracted one of the noblest countries in Christendom, and grant to repentant Penguinia pardon for its crimes against God and the ministers of religion.