The stout mistress perched at her desk told the Royalists that she had not the papers they asked for.
“What papers do you take then?” said one of the officers, a captain.
The waiter, a small youth in a blue cloth jacket and a coarse linen apron, produced the Commerce.
“Oh! so that is your paper! Have you no other?”
“No,” said the waiter, “that is the only one.”
The Captain tore the hostile sheet into fragments, threw it on the floor, and spat upon it, saying, “Bring the dominoes!”
Within ten minutes news of the insult offered to the Constitutional Opposition and Liberalism generally in the person of the sacrosanct paper, which waged war on the priesthood with the courage and wit we all know, was flying along the streets and flashing like light into every house; everyone was telling the tale. The same sentence rose to every lip: “Run and tell Max!”
Max was soon informed. The officers had not finished their game of dominoes when Max, accompanied by Major Potel and Captain Renard, entered the Café; while a following of thirty young fellows, eager to see the end of the matter, remained, for the most part, outside in groups on the Parade. The Café soon was full.
“Waiter, bring me my paper,” said Max very quietly. Then a little comedy was played. The stout woman said in a timid and conciliatory tone:
“I have lent it, Captain.”
“Go and fetch it!” cried one of Max’s companions.
“Cannot you do without the paper?” said the waiter. “We have not got it.”
The young officers were laughing and stealing side-glances at the town party.
“It is torn up!” exclaimed a young Bonapartist, looking at the Captain’s feet.
“Who has dared to tear up the newspaper?” asked Max in a voice of thunder, his eyes flashing, and his arms crossed as he rose.
“And we have spit upon it too,” replied the three Royalists, rising and facing Max.
“You have insulted the whole town!” said Max, turning pale.
“Well, what of that?” said the youngest of the three.
With a neatness, a boldness, and a swiftness which the young men could not guard against. Max dealt two slaps to the foremost man as they stood, saying:
“Do you understand French?”
They went out to fight in the Allée de Frapesle, three against three. Potel and Renard would not hear of allowing Max to fight it out alone with the Royalists. Max killed his man; Potel wounded his so severely that the unhappy lad, a man of good birth, died next day in the hospital, whither they carried him. As for the third, he got off with a sword cut, and wounded Captain Renard, his opponent. The battalion went on to Bourges that night. This affair, much talked about in the country, crowned Maxence Gilet as a hero.
The Knights of Idlesse, all young—the eldest was not five-and-twenty—admired Maxence. Some of them, far from sharing the rigid prudery of their families with regard to Max, envied him greatly, and thought him a very fortunate man. Under such a leader the Order did wonders. From the month of January 1817 not a week passed but the town was in a pother over some fresh prank. Max, as a point of honor, imposed certain conditions on the Knights; bylaws were drawn up. These young devils became as prompt as disciples of Amoros, as tough as kites, skilled in every kind of exercise, as strong and as dexterous as malefactors. They were adepts in the business of creeping over roofs, scaling house-walls, jumping and walking without a sound, spreading mortar, and building up doors. They had an arsenal of ladders, ropes, tools, and disguises. The Knights of Idlesse, in short, achieved the very ideal of ingenious mischief, not only in the execution, but in the invention of the tricks they played. They were at last inspired by that genius of malignity in which Panurge took such delight, which provokes everyone to laugh, and makes the victim so ridiculous that he dare not complain. The men, all respectably connected, had, of course, means of information in private houses which enabled them to obtain such intelligence as could serve them in the perpetration of their rascality.
One very cold night these demons incarnate carried a large stove out into the courtyard of a house, and stoked it so effectually that the fire lasted till morning. Then it was rumored in the town that Monsieur So-and-so (a noted miser!) had been trying to warm his yard.
Sometimes they lay in ambush in the High Street, or the Rue Basse, the two arteries, as it were, of the town, into which run a great number of smaller cross streets. Squatting, each at the corner of a side street, under the wall, putting their heads out when every household was in its first sleep, they would shout in a tone of terror from one end of the town to the other:
“What is the matter? Oh, what is the matter?” The repeated question would rouse the citizens, who soon appeared in their shirts and nightcaps, candle in hand, catechizing each other, and holding the strangest colloquies with the most bewildered faces ever seen.
There was a poor bookbinder, very old, who believed in demons. Like most provincial artisans, he worked in a little low shop. The Knights, disguised as devils, invaded his shop at
