Bahorel, in ecstasies over the barricade, shouted:— 'Here’s the street in its low-necked dress! How well it looks! ' Courfeyrac, as he demolished the wine-shop to some extent, sought to console the widowed proprietress.
'Mother Hucheloup, weren’t you complaining the other day because you had had a notice served on you for infringing the law, because Gibelotte shook a counterpane out of your window? ' 'Yes, my good Monsieur Courfeyrac. Ah!
good Heavens, are you going to put that table of mine in your horror, too? And it was for the counterpane, and also for a pot of flowers which fell from the attic window into the street, that the government collected a fine of a hundred francs.
If that isn’t an abomination, what is! ' 'Well, Mother Hucheloup, we are avenging you. ' Mother Hucheloup did not appear to understand very clearly the benefit which she was to derive from these reprisals made on her account.
She was satisfied after the manner of that Arab woman, who, having received a box on the ear from her husband, went to complain to her father, and cried for vengeance, saying: 'Father, you owe my husband affront for affront.
' The father asked: 'On which cheek did you receive the blow? ' 'On the left cheek. ' The father slapped her right cheek and said: 'Now you are satisfied. Go tell your husband that he boxed my daughter’s ears, and that I have accordingly boxed his wife’s.
' The rain had ceased. Recruits had arrived. Workmen had brought under their blouses a barrel of powder, a basket containing bottles of vitriol, two or three carnival torches, and a basket filled with fire-pots, 'left over from the King’s festival.
' This festival was very recent, having taken place on the 1st of May. It was said that these munitions came from a