A Beleaguered City

Excerpt: ‘The dead rise out of their graves!’ These words, though one has heard them before, took possession of my imagination. I saw the rude fellow go along the street as I went on, tossing the coin in his hand. One time it fell to the ground and rang upon the pavement, and he laughed more loudly as he picked it up. He was walking towards the sunset, and I too, at a distance after. The sky was full of rose-tinted clouds floating across the blue, floating high over the grey pinnacles of the Cathedral, and filling the long open line of the Rue St. Etienne down which he was going. As I crossed to my own house I caught him full against the light, in his blue blouse, tossing the big silver piece in the air, and heard him laugh and shout ‘Vive l''argent! This is the only bon Dieu.’ Though there are many people who live as if this were their sentiment, there are few who give it such brutal expression; but some of the people at the corner of the street laughed too. ‘Bravo, Jacques!’ they cried; and one said, ‘You are right, mon ami, the only god to trust in nowadays.’ ‘It is a short credo, M. le Maire,’ said another, who caught my eye. He saw I was displeased, this one, and his countenance changed at once...