young girl, tall, slim, and beautiful, and bellowing forth with a voice which shook the windows of four streets. "Little one," said he, "we are about to lead the revolution, you and I. It is the occasion. We shall seize it by the hairs. Carmen and her daughter are already on their way to the country." A tremendous uproar had broken out during his silence. Rival factions were vainly trying to drown out one another's war-cries, "Vivent les Vorticists! Vivent les Noctambules!" An adherent of the Celestialists had climbed upon a projection of the façade of a corner building, and was screaming out his creed. "I now proclaim the commune of the soviets of Montmartre," he cried. "In union there is strength. Let us all work together. Vive l'Union Sacrée! We shall defy the French Government. We shall pay no taxes. We support the commune by voluntary offerings. I proclaim for all a policy of free beer and the socialization of the cabaret of the Leaping Mole." "Vive-vive-vive la commune de Montmartre!" screamed the mob. "Oh, how I amuse myself!" cried the young acrobat, ecstatically. "For free beer the Government must have a treasury," Ventrillon continued; "that is obvious. Even what is free must be bought. We shall now proceed to the first collection of the voluntary taxes. I appoint myself treasurer of the soviet government of Montmartre. Pass the hat! Subscribe! Pour out your gold! America aids us." Pandemonium reigned. It appeared that the new-found leader was a genius. Now, for the collection of a public subscription there is nothing more vitally necessary than a pasting-up of posters. Everybody knows that. As it happened, there were no posters upon Montmartre, but Montmartre is the country where only the impossible happens. Within less than ten minutes after this announcement, men were pasting up, in all the streets of the quarter, the old government warloan posters, with the old inscriptions replaced by new and far more piquant ones. A hatful of money was handed up to Ventrillon, and he gave it to the girl to guard. Then came a cardboard box filled with small bank-notes, then another hat. The treasury grew. "Now," said Ventrillon, "we have the money; but to keep it is another affair." They were surrounded in all directions by a mob which would be ready, upon any attempt at embezzling the treasury by escape, to unjoint their members. Now, a certain person in the mob had recognized the girl upon the taxi and had made her way to it in the midst of the uproar. "Chichetta! Chichetta!" called a feminine voice from immediately below the roof of the taxi. "Monsieur," said the girl, "it is the the vanity of triumph. The mob voice of maman." She loosened herself from his embrace to go down on her knees and peer over the edge. "Chichetta," said the woman below, "flee while you can. Here is a franc. I stole it from him for you. You do not know what you are doing. Have I not counseled you to avoid these men? It is better to starve " "But this one," said the girl, "is good, and he can do everything. I have already seen him do it." "Carmen," cried Ventrillon, astounded, "it is you! And you do not know me, Ventrillon? Veritably, this is fate. In fact, I myself am fate. And you are my children. To the taxi, Carmen!" He reached down and gave a hand to Carmen, who now climbed up beside them. "O Ventri," she cried and embraced him, "I did not dreama it was you! It is really you. Dio! how good you are! In your case I have no fear. I giva you my Chichette. I shall be happier to know she is yours-" "She is already mine," said Ventrillon. "Woman, behold the father of your daughter! I have adopted her. And now, pardieu, I adopt her mother." The mob became delirious. They had heard nothing of all this. "Oh," said they, "what a genius is found!" A queen of beauty was on the taxi, and she was an ugly old woman. That is the sort of jest that Paris adores. "Behold the Goddess of Reason!" cried the mob. "Vive the Queen of Love and Beauty!" Now it was that Ventrillon would have wept. Applauded in ridicule as she was, Carmen was smiling with screamed, and Carmen bowed right and left like a queen receiving homage. The mob yelled again. The heavens rang with laughter and the hysterical screams of women. But Ventrillon had no time for weeping. "Carmen," he whispered suddenly, "here are at least a thousand francs. When I give the sign, vamose with them. You are going to the country at last." "None of this is true," said Carmen; "it cannota be." Then suddenly a new cry arose. The hilarity stopped short, crushed into silence beneath the awful earnestness of that first distant yell. The excitement persisted, but it had become sinister. Tragedy was afoot. "The gens d'armes! The police! They have guns! They are going to shoot!" Terror struck the mob. "It is necessary to resist," yelled a voice, and a new leader had arisen. They turned away from the taxi and cried: "Resist! We must resist! Barricades! Arm yourselves! We must have arms! Down with the gendarmes!" Ventrillon turned pale. Was the greatest joke the city of Paris had ever known to end like this? Somebody had made a fatal mistake. It was evident that the police believed a genuine insurrection had taken place. "Down with the gendarmes!" shrieked the mob. "Assassinate the gendarmes!" The temper of the mob did not help matters. Ventrillon's inspiration came like a bolt from the blue. "Comrades of the soviets of Montmartre!" he bellowed, and silence fell. "We must resist," shouted the new leader. "Annihilate the gendarmes!" An angry murmur began again to rise. it is true; but they are human. Let us attack their humanity. What, comrades, is the essential requisite of humanity? You do not know, but I "Silence!" roared Ventrillon, and shall inform you. The chief requisite there was silence. "The comrade has spoken well," he said. "We must annihilate the gendarmes; but how shall we strike them? We have not the guns to shoot them down. The gendarmes are gendarmes, of humanity is beer. Beer, comrades. We shall attack them with beer! Have we not socialized the cabaret of the Leaping Mole? The beer of the Leaping Mole is ours. Let us take possession. Now, listen! Here is the plan of attack. Choose the prettiest girls of Montmartre. Let them carry beer into the ranks of the gendarmes. The humanity of the gendarmes will succumb, and, comrades, the gendarmes are ours!" "Oh, la la!" screamed a girl, "that is amazing, that! Form a Battalion of Death! Forward march!" "Forward, the Battalion of Death!" cried Ventrillon. "En avant!" The women poured into the cabaret of the Leaping Mole and overpowered the proprietor. They issued, bearing a veritable deluge of beer-beer in bottles, beer in glasses, beer in pitchers, beer in mugs, and two stalwart women bore a keg upon their shoulders. "To the attack!" screamed the delighted throng. $ 7 The entire company of gendarmes had now abandoned themselves to the mob, each with an arm about a pretty private from the newly organized Battalion of Death. Everywhere the beer flowed freely. The imprecations and angry commands thundered by their officers were of no avail. The genThe gendarmes had become socialized; they were one with the proletariat. The soviets had triumphed. "The power of dictator," he went on, "is, as you know, absolute. My first order will affect the disposition of this, the first collection of the voluntary tax." (Deafening cheers.) "I dedicate it to the Goddess of Reason and her daughter, the dictatress of the commune!" For a moment there was silence. Then the sound of the anger of the thwarted mob gathered. "Non! non!" they cried, "free beer!" "Ingrates!" shouted Ventrillon, “I have saved you from mutilation and death, and you refuse to obey? Do you not know that the high position of these ladies compels them to give great fêtes to the populace?" A tremendous appreciative roar cut him off short. Ah, this witty dictator! So that was what he meant. Ventrillon formally presented the hatfuls of money to Carmen, who accepted it with a bow. The mob went mad. "Dance a round!" they screamed hysterically, "Danser un rond! Danser!” Somebody started to sing "The Marseillaise," another began the old "Madélon" of the war; but these two songs succumbed beneath the roaring sound of another, which seemed to A new yell arose and spread until it spring spontaneously from the lips of was upon the lips of all. every one. The revolution had found "The man on the taxi-for dictator its song-the song of Montmartre, the of the commune!" "He calls himself Ventri," screeched Carmen. "Ventri for dictator! Ventri who saved us! Ventri, dictator of the commune of Montmartre!" song which more than any other expresses the whole philosophy of Paris: Quand on est mort, on est foutu-u-u, Quand on est mort, on est-foutu! "Now, Carmen," said Ventrillon Ventrillon put up his hand. Again "now is the time to go. Fly before silence fell. "I accept," he said nobly. There came a thunder of cheers. they find out the trick I have played them, or they'll serve us all up with potatoes. Lose yourselves! Go!" The crowd had formed into circles, which, holding hands, were whirling deliriously. "Monsieur," said the daughter of Carmen, timidly, "I do not want to go. I would stay with you, monsieur." Ventrillon looked into those shining eyes and upon those flushed cheeks and upon those delicate, half-parted lips turned up to him. "Truly," he thought, "she is more than pretty; she is ravishing." A strange light lay upon her face, and she stood on tiptoe, pushing her lips nearer his. Ventrillon grew dizzy. camel, thou cow, thou offspring found by monkeys in a cabbage! You have ruined me! Oh, la-la, la-la, la-la!" "Nom de dieu!" swore Ventrillon, "are you not satisfied with being the proprietor of the most celebrated cabaret in Paris! From to-night the Leaping Mole is famous. To-morrow all Paris will fight to enter here, and you can charge them what you will. Your fortune is made, and I who have this night handled a thousand francs am forché! I am without a sou. You should go down on your knees and kiss my hand. I, Ventrillon, have rendered you a celebrity. In return for that I permit you to offer me a beer." From below came the roaring of that dered you a celebrity. abandoned, cynical song: For love is part of life, and we all must profit by it. "Oh, what a fool was that Saint Anthony!" said Ventrillon, and his lips went down, down "What did you say, monsieur?” "I said, 'I told you once that I am a first cousin to Saint Anthony,'" he cried roughly and drew himself up again. "Now go! I have protected you to-day; may God protect you tomorrow!" § 8 Exhausted, lonely, with a terrible thirst and without a sou, Ventrillon made his way through the mad maze of that terrific dance to the cabaret of the Leaping Mole. He found Freddy, the proprietor, stamping dazedly about the ruined shop, tearing at his long, white beard. "I am ruined! ruined!" mumbled Freddy. "Saluez!" called Ventrillon. The old man looked up. "Oh-h-h-h, it's you! Will you look upon what you have done! Thou But Freddy, despite this burst of eloquence, made no move for the beer. He was plunged in thought. It was true; this night's work would be the sensation of Paris. The papers would be full of it on the morrow. Every broken article in his place was an added attraction to bring to it all Paris. All Paris-that strange social unit of adventurers, idlers, sensationhunters, people of fashion, who scatter money right and left. But there was a greater attraction yet that he might show them. Why not the dictator of the commune himself? "Listen, my friend," said Freddy. "You say that you have not a sou. Eh b'en; I will pay you a hundred francs a week to exhibit yourself in my cabaret every evening "Tonnerre de dieu!" swore Ventrillon. He had not thought of that. The offer Freddy made him revealed to him the fact that lay behind it: he, Ventrillon, himself, was now the most conspicuous figure in Paris! The President of France was nothing; he even surpassed Landru, the man who married eighteen wives and then killed |