Chapter 31

and dragged him forcibly back.

"Assassin!" I cried, "would you murder him?"

He flung us off, as a baited bull flings off a pack of curs. For myself, though I received only a backhanded blow on the chest, I staggered as if I had been struck with a sledgehammer.

Müller, half-fainting, dropped into a chair.

There was a tramp and clatter at the door--a swaying and parting of the crowd.

"Here are the sergents de ville!" cried a trembling waiter.

"He attacked me first," gasped Müller. "He has half strangled me."

"_Qu'est ce que ça me fait_!" shouted the enraged proprietor. "You are a couple of _canaille_! You have made a scandal in my Café. Sergents, arrest both these gentlemen!"

The police--there were two of them, with their big cocked hats on their heads and their long sabres by their sides--pushed through the circle of spectators. The first laid his hand on Müller's shoulder; the second was about to lay his hand on mine, but I drew back.

"Which is the other?" said he, looking round.

"_Sacredie_!" stammered the proprietor, "he was here--there--not a moment ago!"

"_Diable_!" said the sergent de ville, stroking his moustache, and staring fiercely about him. "Did no one see him go?"

There was a chorus of exclamations--a rush to the inner salon--to the door--to the street. But the stranger was nowhere in sight; and, which was still more incomprehensible, no one had seen him go!

"_Mais, mon Dieu_!" exclaimed the proprietor, mopping his head and face violently with his pocket-handkerchief, "was the man a ghost, that he should vanish into the air?"

"_Parbleu_! a ghost with muscles of iron," said Müller. "Talk of the strength of a madman--he has the strength of a whole lunatic asylum!"

"He gave me a most confounded blow in the ribs, anyhow!" said Lepany.

"And nearly broke my arm," added Eugène Droz.

"And has given me a pain in my chest for a week," said I, in chorus.

"If he wasn't a ghost," observed the fat student sententiously, "he must certainly be the devil."

The sergents de ville grinned.

"Do we, then, arrest this gentleman?" asked the taller and bigger of the two, his hand still upon my friend's shoulder.

But Müller laughed and shook his head.

"What!" said he, "arrest a man for resisting the devil? Nonsense, _mes amis_, you ought to canonize me. What says Monsieur le propriétaire?"

Monsieur the proprietor smiled.

"I am willing to let the matter drop," he replied, "on the understanding that Monsieur Müller was not really the first offender."

"_Foi d'honneur_! He insulted me--I threw some coffee in his face--he flung himself upon me like a tiger, and almost choked me, as all here witnessed. And for what? Because I did him the honor to make a rough pencilling of his ugly face ... _Mille tonnerres_!--the fellow has stolen my sketch-book!"