The two men on the bench and the eight at the tables, although they seemed perfect strangers to each other, these ten men alone, we say, appeared to have agreed to remain impassible amidst the cries of fury and the chinking of money.  Two only contented themselves with pushing with their feet combatants who came under their table.  Two others, rather than take part in this disturbance, buried their hands in their pockets; and another two jumped upon the table they occupied, as people do to avoid being submerged by overflowing water.

“Come, come,” said D’Artagnan to himself, not having lost one of the details we have related, “this is a very fair gathering — circumspect, calm, accustomed to disturbance, acquainted with blows! Peste! I have been lucky.”

All at once his attention was called to a particular part of the room.  The two men who had pushed the strugglers with their feet, were assailed with abuse by the sailors, who had become reconciled.  One of them, half drunk with passion, and quite drunk with beer, came, in a menacing manner, to demand of the shorter of these two sages by what right he had touched with his foot creatures of the good God, who were not dogs.  And whilst putting this question, in order to make it more direct, he applied his great fist to the nose of D’Artagnan’s recruit.

This man became pale, without its being to be discerned whether his pallor arose from anger or fear; seeing which, the sailor concluded it was from fear, and raised his fist with the manifest intention of letting it fall upon the head of the stranger.  But though the threatened man did not appear to move, he dealt the sailor such a severe blow in the stomach that he sent him rolling and howling to the other side of the room.  At the same instant, rallied by the espirit de corps, all the comrades of the conquered man fell upon the conqueror

The latter, with the same coolness of which he had given proof, without committing the imprudence of touching his weapons, took up a beer-pot with a pewter-lid, and knocked down two or three of his assailants; then, as he was about to yield to numbers, the seven other silent men at the tables, who had not yet stirred, perceived that their cause was at stake, and came to the rescue.  At the same time, the two indifferent spectators at the door turned round with frowning bows, indicating their evident intention of taking the enemy in the rear, if the enemy did not cease their aggressions.

The host, his helpers, and two watchmen who were passing, and who from the curiosity had penetrated too far into the room, were mixed up in the tumult and showered with blows.  The Parisians hit like Cyclops, with an ensemble and a tactic delightful to behold.  At length, obliged to beat a retreat before superior numbers, they formed an intrenchment behind the large table, which they raised by main force; whilst the two others, arming themselves each with a trestle,