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Heron growled out a few words of incredulity. But Chauvelin shrugged his shoulders and looked with unutterable contempt on his colleague. Armand, who was watching him closely, saw that in his hand he held a small piece of paper, which he had crushed into a shapeless mass. "Do not waste your time, citizen," he said, "in raging against an empty wind-bag.
"I've never heard anybody but a preacher I beg your pardon, Gabriel, nothing personal! who could keep going so long when nobody was listening. A mere wind-bag, that's what he is, with a lot of nonsensical ideas about his own importance.
He parted quite amicably from de Marmont, promising to call in upon him in the morning. It would be foolish to quarrel with that young wind-bag now. He knew some things, and talked of a great many more. Preparations against the arrival of the Corsican ogre were proceeding apace.
Some braver and abler, and usually more virtuous people, often some little, hardy, homely mountain tribe, saw that the fruit was ripe for gathering; and, caring naught for superior numbers and saying with German Alaric when the Romans boasted of their numbers, "The thicker the hay the easier it is mowed" struck one brave blow at the huge inflated wind-bag as Cyrus and his handful of Persians struck at the Medes; as Alexander and his handful of Greeks struck afterwards at the Persians and behold, it collapsed upon the spot.
There he was, the oul' wind-bag, bletherin' about his friend, the Queen of Spain, an' his friend, the Emperor of Germany, an' there was me, just waitin' for him, just waitin', Henry, an' the minute he shut his gob, I jumped in, an' says I to him, 'An' what did your friend God say? By the Holy O, that was a good one!
His hearers who have staked their lives on his head, see the naked truth, see it to their horror. He is a man of words, a man of committees, a wind-bag incapable of prompt action, incompetent to lead a Revolution. They draw him into the Hall of Deliberation. Now they are all there, these illustrious outlaws, Lebas, Saint-Just, Couthon. Robespierre has the word.
But his fears were soon allayed; Colonel Tudesco was only a wind-bag, and could not really arrest people. Besides, was it credible that Bargemont, head of a Ministerial Department, was still in Paris? And after all, if he did come to harm, well, so much the worse for him! Two days after a cab with a musket barrel protruding from either window stopped before the bookbinder's shop.
And the honest, staring youth comes forward to see what is wanted. This unexpected response rather pricks the wind-bag of the man's zeal. He looks curiously at the boy, who follows him out of the house. "Stephen, did you ever see that fellow before?" "Yes, Sir; he's the one come to our house Saturday night, and I showed round to the Judge's." "Are you the fellow?" "Yes," says Fessenden's.
That he was brave we know, but so was Cataline; that he believed in himself we like to believe, and so did Arius of Alexandria; that he carried the people with him is certain, and so did they who crucified Jesus; but that he was a turbulent fellow, a puritan, a vandal, a boaster, a wind-bag, a discredited prophet, and a superstitious failure, we also know, as he doubtless did at last, when the wild beast he had roused had him by the throat, and burnt him in the fire he had invoked.
The self-made man is the funniest wind-bag after all! There is a marked difference between decreeing light in chaos, and lighting the gas in a metropolitan back-parlour with a box of patent matches; and do what we will, there is always something made to our hand, if it were only our fingers. But there was something worse than foolishness placarded in Creil Church.
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