Forthwith he composed a memorandum in which he clearly showed that Pyrot could not have stolen from the Ministry of War the eighty thousand trusses of hay which it had never received, for the reason that Maubec had never delivered them, though he had received the money.  Colomban caused this statement to be distributed in the streets of Alca.  The people refused to read it and tore it up in anger.  The shop-keepers shook their fists at the distributers, who made off, chased by angry women armed with brooms.  Feelings grew warm and the ferment lasted the whole day.  In the evening bands of wild and ragged men went about the streets yelling:  “Death to Colomban!” The patriots snatched whole bundles of the memorandum from the newsboys and burned them in the public squares, dancing wildly round these bon-fires with girls whose petticoats were tied up to their waists.

Some of the more enthusiastic among them went and broke the windows of the house in which Colomban had lived in perfect tranquillity during his forty years of work.

Parliament was roused and asked the Chief of the Government what measures he proposed to take in order to repel the odious attacks made by Colomban upon the honour of the National Arm and the safety of Penguinia.  Robin Mielleux denounced Colomban’s impious audacity and proclaimed amid the cheers of the legislators that the man would be summoned before the Courts to answer for his infamous libel.

The Minister of War was called to the tribune and appeared in it transfigured.  He had no longer the air, as in former days, of one of the sacred geese of the Penguin citadels.  Now, bristling, with outstretched neck and hooked beak, he seemed the symbolical vulture fastened to the livers of his country’s enemies.

In the august silence of the assembly he pronounced these words only: 

“I swear that Pyrot is a rascal.”

This speech of Greatauk was reported all over Penguinia and satisfied the public conscience.

V. THE REVEREND FATHERS AGARIC AND CORNEMUSE

Colomban bore with meekness and surprise the weight of the general reprobation.  He could not go out without being stoned, so he did not go out.  He remained in his study with a superb obstinacy, writing new memoranda in favour of the encaged innocent.  In the mean time among the few readers that he found, some, about a dozen, were struck by his reasons and began to doubt Pyrot’s guilt.  They broached the subject to their friends and endeavoured to spread the light that had arisen in their minds.  One of them was a friend of Robin Mielleux and confided to him his perplexities, with the result that he was no longer received by that Minister.  Another demanded explanations in an open letter to the Minister of War.  A third published a terrible pamphlet.  The latter, whose name was Kerdanic, was a formidable controversialist.  The public was unmoved.