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Squatted on the ground beside the corpse, he was devouring the bloodstained bread, an expression of stupid ferocity on his face, with a loud grinding of his great jaws, while Chouteau and Loubet, seeing him thus terrible in the gratification of his wild-beast appetite, did not even dare claim their portion.
And the six men ran as if their lives were at stake, never stopping to take breath, as if they heard the pursuers at their heels. Suddenly Loubet brought the others to a halt. "It's idiotic to run like this; let's decide where we shall go to cook the stuff." Jean, who was beginning to recover his self-possession, proposed the quarries.
He had fallen on his flank, and every now and then would raise his head and look about him pleadingly, with a deep inhalation that sounded like a sigh. "Ah, how long we have to wait!" grumbled Lapoulle, who was suffering torment from his fierce appetite. "I'll go and kill him shall I?" But Loubet stopped him.
At the second blow, however, the horse, stung by the pain, attempted to get on his feet. Chouteau and Loubet had thrown themselves across his legs and were endeavoring to hold him down, shouting to the others to help them.
Chouteau had discovered three large beets, that had somehow been overlooked by previous visitors to the field, and carried them off with him. Loubet had loaded the meat on Lapoulle's shoulders so as to have his own arms free, while Pache carried the kettle that belonged to the squad, which they had brought with them on the chance of finding something to cook in it.
"It makes no difference," shouted Loubet, with the blague of a child of the Halles, "but this is not the Berlin road we are traveling, all the same." To Berlin! To Berlin! The cry rang in Maurice's ears, the yell of the swarming mob that filled the boulevards on that midsummer night of frenzied madness when he had determined to enlist.
The future looked blank; but M. Loubet was elected President, and a feeling of great relief followed. I have reason to believe that M. Zola regards the death of President Faure as the crucial turning-point in the whole Dreyfus business.
Loubet and Chouteau had nudged each other with the elbow and disappeared down a blind alley in pursuit of a fat woman with a loaf of bread, so that all who remained with the lieutenant were Pache and Lapoulle, with some ten or a dozen more. Rochas was standing by the base of the bronze statue of Turenne, making heroic efforts to keep his eyes open.
It was Chouteau and Loubet, who had left the peninsula of Iges that morning at the same time as they, and whom they had managed to steer clear of until the present moment. Now the two worthies were close at their heels, and Chouteau must have overheard Maurice's words, his plan for escaping through the mazes of a forest, for he had adopted it on his own behalf.
Upon the sudden death of M. Faure in 1899, Emile Loubet, a lawyer of national reputation, was chosen to succeed him, and his administration commenced while this storm was reaching its final culmination. With the release of Captain Dreyfus the agitation subsided. But before very long another storm-cloud appeared. A conflict between clericalism and the Government of France is not a new thing.
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