wearing brown jackets, others dark greatcoats, and others again blue blouses girded with red sashes.  Moreover, their arms were an equally odd collection:  there were newly sharpened scythes, large navvies’ spades, and fowling-pieces with burnished barrels glittering in the sunshine.  And at the very moment when the improvised general was riding past the little army, a sentry, who had been forgotten in an olive-plantation, ran up gesticulating and shouting: 

“The soldiers!  The soldiers!”

There was indescribable emotion.  At first, they thought it a false alarm.  Forgetting all discipline, they rushed forward to the end of the esplanade in order to see the soldiers.  The ranks were broken, and as the dark line of troops appeared, marching in perfect order with a long glitter of bayonets, on the other side of the greyish curtain of olive trees, there came a hasty and disorderly retreat, which sent a quiver of panic to the other end of the plateau.  Nevertheless, the contingents of La Palud and Saint-Martin-de-Vaulx had again formed in line in the middle of the promenade, and stood there erect and fierce.  A wood-cutter, who was a head taller than any of his companions, shouted, as he waved his red neckerchief:  “To arms, Chavanoz, Graille, Poujols, Saint-Eutrope!  To arms, Les Tulettes!  To arms, Plassans!”

Crowds streamed across the esplanade.  The man with the sabre, surrounded by the folks from Faverolles, marched off with several of the country contingents—­Vernoux, Corbiere, Marsanne, and Pruinas—­to outflank the enemy and then attack him.  Other contingents, from Valqueyras, Nazere, Castel-le-Vieux, Les Roches-Noires, and Murdaran, dashed to the left, scattering themselves in skirmishing parties over the Nores plain.

And meantime the men of the towns and villages that the wood-cutter had called to his aid mustered together under the elms, there forming a dark irregular mass, grouped without regard to any of the rules of strategy, simply placed there like a rock, as it were, to bar the way or die.  The men of Plassans stood in the middle of this heroic battalion.  Amid the grey hues of the blouses and jackets, and the bluish glitter of the weapons, the pelisse worn by Miette, who was holding the banner with both hands, looked like a large red splotch—­a fresh and bleeding wound.

All at once perfect silence fell.  Monsieur Peirotte’s pale face appeared at a window of the Hotel de la Mule-Blanche.  And he began to speak, gesticulating with his hands.

“Go in, close the shutters,” the insurgents furiously shouted; “you’ll get yourself killed.”

Thereupon the shutters were quickly closed, and nothing was heard save the regular, rhythmical tramp of the soldiers who were drawing near.