[Penguin Island by Anatole France]@TWC D-Link book
Penguin Island

BOOK VI
74/95

He will save them, but, if you are wanting, He will do so by means of a humble artisan or a simple corporal.

Hasten! The hour will soon be past." Excited by this ardent exhortation, the sixty thousand people present rose up trembling and shouting: "To arms! To arms! Death to the Pyrotists! Hurrah for Crucho!" and all of them, monks, women, soldiers, noblemen, citizens, and loafers, who were gathered beneath the superhuman arm uplifted in the pulpit, struck up the hymn, "Let us save Penguinia!" They rushed impetuously from the basilica and marched along the quays to the Chamber of Deputies.
Left alone in the deserted nave, the wise Cornemuse, lifting his arms to heaven, murmured in broken accents: "Agnosco fortunam ecclesiae penguicanae! I see but too well whither this will lead us." The attack which the crowd made upon the legislative palace was repulsed.

Vigorously charged by the police and Alcan guards, the assailants were already fleeing in disorder, when the Socialists, running from the slums and led by comrades Phoenix, Dagobert, Lapersonne, and Varambille, threw themselves upon them and completed their discomfiture.MM.de La Trumelle and d'Ampoule were taken to the police station.

Prince des Boscenos, after a valiant struggle, fell upon the bloody pavement with a fractured skull.
In the enthusiasm of victory, the comrades, mingled with an innumerable crowd of paper-sellers and gutter-merchants, ran through the boulevards all night, carrying, Maniflore in triumph, and breaking the mirrors of the cafes and the glasses of the street lamps amid cries of "Down with Crucho! Hurrah for the Social Revolution!" The Anti-Pyrotists in their turn upset the newspaper kiosks and tore down the hoardings.
These were spectacles of which cool reason cannot approve and they were fit causes for grief to the municipal authorities, who desired to preserve the good order of the roads and streets.

But, what was sadder for a man of heart was the sight or the canting humbugs, who, from fear of blows, kept at an equal distance from the two camps, and who, although they allowed their selfishness and cowardice to be visible, claimed admiration for the generosity of their sentiments and the nobility of their souls.


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