he received with the calm that comes from courage and short-sightedness.  Whilst caretakers and tradespeople tore down the bills he had posted, he kept on zealously placarding, carrying his tools and followed by little boys who, with their baskets under their arms or their satchels on their backs, were in no hurry to reach school.  To the mute indignation against him, protests and murmurs were now added.  But Colomban did not condescend to see or hear anything.  As, at the entrance to the Rue St. Orberosia, he was posting one of his squares of paper bearing the words:  Pyrot is innocent, Maubec is guilty, the riotous crowd showed signs of the most violent anger.  They called after him, “Traitor, thief, rascal, scoundrel.”  A woman opened a window and emptied a vase full of filth over his head, a cabby sent his hat flying from one end of the street to the other by a blow of his whip amid the cheers of the crowd who now felt themselves avenged.  A butcher’s boy knocked Colomban with his paste-pot, his brush, and his posters, from the top of his ladder into the gutter, and the proud Penguins then felt the greatness of their country.  Colomban stood up, covered with filth, lame, and with his elbow injured, but tranquil and resolute.

“Low brutes,” he muttered, shrugging his shoulders.

Then he went down on all-fours in the gutter to look for his glasses which he had lost in his fall.  It was then seen that his coat was split from the collar to the tails and that his trousers were in rags.  The rancour of the crowd grew stronger.

On the other side of the street stretched the big St. Orberosian Stores.  The patriots seized whatever they could lay their hands on from the shop front, and hurled at Colomban oranges, lemons, pots of jam, pieces of chocolate, bottles of liqueurs, boxes of sardines, pots of foie gras, hams, fowls, flasks of oil, and bags of haricots.  Covered with the debris of the food, bruised, tattered, lame, and blind, he took to flight, followed by the shop-boys, bakers, loafers, citizens, and hooligans whose number increased each moment and who kept shouting:  “Duck him!  Death to the traitor!  Duck him!” This torrent of vulgar humanity swept along the streets and rushed into the Rue St. Mael.  The police did their duty.  From all the adjacent streets constables proceeded and, holding their scabbards with their left hands, they went at full speed in front of the pursuers.  They were on the point of grabbing Colomban in their huge hands when he suddenly escaped them by falling through an open man-hole to the bottom of a sewer.

He spent the night there in the darkness, sitting close by the dirty water amidst the fat and slimy rats.  He thought of his task, and his swelling heart filled with courage and pity.  And when the dawn threw a pale ray of light into the air-hole he got up and said, speaking to himself: 

“I see that the fight will be a stiff one.”