"Behave properly, you ruffian, or I will publish the Maloury dossier!"

Some days later by a unanimous vote of both Houses, on a motion proposed by
the Government, the Anti-Pyrotist Association was granted a charter

recognising it as beneficial to the public interest.
The Association immediately sent a deputation to Chitterlings Castle in

Porpoisia, where Crucho was eating the bitter bread of exile, to assure the
prince of the love and devotion of the Anti-Pyrotist members.

However, the Pyrotists grew in numbers, and now counted ten thousand. They had
their regular cafes on the boulevards. The patriots had theirs also, richer

and bigger, and every evening glasses of beer, saucers, match-stands, jugs,
chairs, and tables were hurled from one to the other. Mirrors were smashed to

bits, and the police ended the struggles by impartially trampling the
combatants of both parties under their hob-nailed shoes.

On one of these glorious nights, as Prince des Boscenos was leaving a
fashionable cafe in the company of some patriots, M. de La Trumelle pointed

out to him a little, bearded man with glasses, hatless, and having only one
sleeve to his coat, who was painfully dragging himself along the

rubbish-strewn pavement.
"Look!" said he, "there is Colomban!"

The prince had gentleness as well as strength; he was exceedingly mild; but at
the name of Colomban his blood boiled. He rushed at the little spectacled man,

and knocked him down with one blow of his fist on the nose.
M. de La Trumelle then perceived that, misled by an undeserved resemblance, he

had mistaken for Colomban, M. Bazile, a retiredlawyer, the secretary of the
Anti-pyrotist Association, and an ardent and generouspatriot. Prince des

Boscenos was one of those antique souls who never bend. However, he knew how
to recognise his faults.

"M. Bazile," said he, raising his hat, "if I have touched your face with my
hand you will excuse me and you will understand me, you will approve of me,

nay, you will compliment me, you will congratulate me and felicitate me, when
you know the cause of that act. I took you for Colomban."

M. Bazile, wiping his bleeding nostrils with his handkerchief and displaying
an elbow laid bare by the absence of his sleeve:

"No, sir," answered he drily, "I shall not felicitate you, I shall not
congratulate you, I shall not compliment you, for your action was, at the very

least, superfluous; it was, I will even say, supererogatory. Already this
evening I have been three times mistaken for Colomban and received a

sufficient amount of the treatment he deserves. The patriots have knocked in
my ribs and broken my back, and, sir, I was of opinion that that was enough."

Scarcely had he finished this speech than a band of Pyrotists appeared, and
misled in their turn by that insidious resemblance, they believed that the

patriots were killing Colomban. They fell on Prince des Boscenos and his
companions with loaded canes and leather thongs, and left them for dead. Then

seizing Bazile they carried him in triumph, and in spite of his protests,
along the boulevards, amid cries of: "Hurrah for Colomban! Hurrah for Pyrot!"

At last the police, who had been sent after them, attacked and defeated them
and dragged them ignominiously to the station, where Bazile, under the name of

Colomban, was trampled on by an innumerable quantity of thick, hob-nailed
shoes.

VII. BIDAULT-COQUILLE AND MANIFLORE, THE SOCIALISTS
Whilst the wind of anger and hatred blew in Alca, Eugine Bidault- Coquille,

poorest and happiest of astronomers, installed in an old steam-engine of the
time of the Draconides, was observing the heavens through a bad telescope, and

photographing the paths of the meteors upon some damaged photographic plates.
His genius corrected the errors of his instruments and his love of science

triumphed over the worthlessness of his apparatus. With an inextinguishable
ardour he observed aerolites, meteors, and fire-balls, and all the glowing

ruins and blazing sparks which pass through the terrestrial atmosphere with
prodigious speed, and as a reward for is studious vigils he received the

indifference of the public, the ingratitude of the State and the blame of the
learned societies. Engulfed in the celestial spaces he knew not what occurred

upon the surface of the earth. He never read the newspapers, and when he
walked through the town his mind was occupied with the November asteroids, and

more than once he found himself at the bottom of a pond in one of the public
parks or beneath the wheels of a motor omnibus.

Elevated in stature as in thought he respected himself and others. This was
shown by his cold politeness as well as by a very thin black frock coat and a

tall hat which gave to his person an appearance at once emaciated and sublime.
He took his meals in a little restaurant from which all customers less

intellectual than himself had fled, and thenceforth his napkin bound by its
wooden ring rested alone in the abandoned" target="_blank" title="a.被抛弃的；无约束的">abandoned rack.

In this cook-shop his eyes fell one evening upon Colomban's memorandum in
favour of Pyrot. He read it as he was cracking some bad nuts and suddenly,

exalted with astonishment, admiration, horror, and pity, he forgot all about
falling meteors and shooting stars and saw nothing but the innocent man

hanging in his cage exposed to the winds of heaven and the ravens perching
upon it.

That image did not leave him. For a week he had been obsessed by the innocent
convict, when, as he was leaving his cook-shop, he saw a crowd of citizens

entering a public-house in which a public meeting was going on. He went in.
The meeting was disorderly; they were yelling, abusing one another and

knocking one another down in the smoke-laden hall. The Pyrotists and the
Anti-Pyrotists spoke in turn and were alternately cheered and hissed at. An

obscure and confused enthusiasm moved the audience. With the audacity of a
timid and retired man Bidault-Coquille leaped upon the platform and spoke for

three-quarters of an hour. He spoke very quickly, without order, but with
vehemence, and with all the conviction of a mathematicalmystic. He was

cheered. When he got down from the platform a big woman of uncertain age,
dressed in red, and wearing an immense hat trimmed with heroic feathers,

throwing herself into his arms, embraced him, and said to him:
"You are splendid!"

He thought in his simplicity that there was some truth in the statement.
She declared to him that henceforth she would live but for Pyrot's defence and

Colomban's glory. He thought her sublime and beautiful. She was Maniflore, a
poor old courtesan, now forgotten and discarded, who had suddenly become a

vehement politician.
She never left him. They spent glorious hours together in doss-houses and in

lodgings beautified by their love, in newspaper offices, in meeting-halls and
in lecture-halls. As he was an idealist, he persisted in thinking her

beautiful, although she gave him abundant opportunity of seeing that she had
preserved no charm of any kind. From her past beauty she only retained a

confidence in her capacity for pleasing and a lofty assurance in demanding
homage. Still, it must be admitted that this Pyrot affair, so fruitful in

prodigies, invested Maniflore with a sort of civic majesty, and transformed
her, at public meetings, into an augustsymbol of justice and truth.

Bidault-Coquille and Maniflore did not kindle the least spark of irony or
amusement in a single Anti-Pyrotist, a single defender of Greatauk, or a

single supporter of the army. The gods, in their anger, had refused to those
men the precious gift of humour. They gravely accused the courtesan and the

astronomer of being spies, of treachery, and of plotting against their
country. Bidault-Coquille and Maniflore grew visibly greater beneath insult,

abuse, and calumny.
For long months Penguinia had been divided into two camps and, though at first

sight it may appear strange, hitherto the socialists had taken no part in the
contest. Their groups comprised almost all the manual workers in the country,

necessarily scattered, confused, broken up, and divided, but formidable. The
Pyrot affair threw the group leaders into a singularembarrassment. They did

not wish to place themselves either on the side of the financiers or on the
side of the army. They regarded the Jews, both great and small, as their

uncompromising opponents. Their principles were not at stake, nor were their
interests concerned in the affair. Still the greater number felt how difficult

it was growing for them to remain aloof from struggles in which all Penguinia
was engaged.

Their leaders called a sitting of their federation at the Rue de la
Queue-du-diable-St. Mael, to take into consideration the conduct they ought to

adopt in the present circumstances and in future eventualities.
Comrade Phoenix was the first to speak.

"A crime," said he, "the most odious and cowardly of crimes, a judicial crime,
has been committed. Military judges, coerced or misled by their superior

officers, have condemned an innocent man to an infamous and cruel punishment.
Let us not say that the victim is not one of our own party, that he belongs to

a caste which was, and always will be, our enemy. Our party is the party of
social justice; it can look upon no iniquity with indifference.

"It would be a shame for us if we left it to Kerdanic, a radical, to Colomban,
a member of the middle classes, and to a few moderate Republicans, alone to

proceed against the crimes of the army. If the victim is not one of us, his
executioners are our brothers' executioners, and before Greatauk struck down

this soldier he shot our comrades who were on strike.
"Comrades, by an intellectual, moral and material effort you must rescue Pyrot

from his torment, and in performing this generous act you are not turning
aside from the liberating and revolutionary task you have undertaken, for

Pyrot his become the symbol of the oppressed and of all the social iniquities
that now exist; by destroying one you make all the others tremble."

When Phoenix ended, comrade Sapor spoke in these terms:
"You are advised to abandon your task in order to do something with which you

have no concern. Why throw yourselves into a conflict where, on whatever side