CHAPTER VIII.
ON THE THRESHOLD.
He hurried along the ramparts in a rage with those whom he had left, in a still greater rage with himself.

He had played the Tissot with a vengeance.

He had flown at them in weak passion, he had recoiled as weakly, he had left them to call him coward.

Now, even now, he was fleeing from them, and they were jeering at him.

Ay, jeering at him; their laughter followed him, and burned his ears.
The rain that beat on his fevered face, the moist wind from the Rhone Valley below, could not wipe out _that_--the defeat and the shame.