A terrific roar acclaimed that statement.  Tense and quivering with the excitement that was flowing through him, and from him out into that great audience, he stood a moment smiling ironically.  Then he waved them into silence, and saw by their ready obedience how completely he possessed them.  For in the voice with which he spoke each now recognized the voice of himself, giving at last expression to the thoughts that for months and years had been inarticulately stirring in each simple mind.

Presently he resumed, speaking more quietly, that ironic smile about the corner of his mouth growing more marked: 

“In taking my leave of M. de Lesdiguieres I gave him warning out of a page of natural history.  I told him that when the wolves, roaming singly through the jungle, were weary of being hunted by the tiger, they banded themselves into packs, and went a-hunting the tiger in their turn.  M. de Lesdiguieres contemptuously answered that he did not understand me.  But your wits are better than his.  You understand me, I think?  Don’t you?”

Again a great roar, mingled now with some approving laughter, was his answer.  He had wrought them up to a pitch of dangerous passion, and they were ripe for any violence to which he urged them.  If he had failed with the windmill, at least he was now master of the wind.

“To the Palais!” they shouted, waving their hands, brandishing canes, and — here and there — even a sword.  “To the Palais!  Down with M. de Lesdiguieres!  Death to the King’s Lieutenant!”

He was master of the wind, indeed.  His dangerous gift of oratory
 — a gift nowhere more powerful than in France, since nowhere else
are men’s emotions so quick to respond to the appeal of eloquence
 — had given him this mastery.  At his bidding now the gale would
sweep away the windmill against which he had flung himself in vain.  But that, as he straightforwardly revealed it, was no part of his intent.

“Ah, wait!” he bade them.  “Is this miserable instrument of a corrupt system worth the attention of your noble indignation?”

He hoped his words would be reported to M. de Lesdiguieres.  He thought it would be good for the soul of M. de Lesdiguieres to hear the undiluted truth about himself for once.

“It is the system itself you must attack and overthrow; not a mere instrument — a miserable painted lath such as this.  And precipitancy will spoil everything.  Above all, my children, no violence!”

My children!  Could his godfather have heard him!

“You have seen often already the result of premature violence elsewhere in Brittany, and you have heard of it elsewhere in France.  Violence on your part will call for violence on theirs.  They will welcome the chance to assert their mastery by a firmer grip than heretofore.  The military will be sent for.  You will be faced by the bayonets of mercenaries.  Do not provoke that, I implore you.  Do not put it into their power, do not afford them the pretext they would welcome to crush you down into the mud of your own blood.”