This is Monsieur Martin Marie Rigobert de Garnache, Mestre-de-Champ in the army of the King." "Of all those names the one I should opine might fit him best, but for his ugliness, is that of Marie," answered the foreigner, leering, and with a contemptuous shrug he turned again to mount the carriage.
At that all Garnache's self-control deserted him, and he did a thing deplorable.

In one of his blind accesses of fury, heedless of the faithful and watchful Rabecque's arresting tug at his sleeve, he stepped forward, and brought a heavy hand down upon the supercilious gentleman's shoulder.

He took him in the instant in which, with one foot off the ground and the other on the step of the carriage, the foreigner was easily thrown' off his balance; he dragged him violently backward, span him round and dropped him floundering in the mire of the street-kennel.
That done, there fell a pause--a hush that was ominous of things impending.

A little crowd of idlers that had gathered was quickly augmenting now, and from some there came a cry of "Shame!" at Garnache's act of violence.
This is no moment at which to pause to moralize.

And yet, how often is it not so?
How often does not public sympathy go out to the man who has been assaulted without thought of the extent to which that man may have provoked and goaded his assailant.
That cry of "Shame!" did no more than increase the anger that was mastering Garnache.