"Got a bad cough, I'm afraid, old chap!" said Bras Rouge's brat. "You're hoarse, I'm afraid? I have some capital liquorice which a gen-d'arme gave me. P'raps you'd like to try it?" and, taking up a handful of sand, he threw it in the face of the ruffian.
Struck full in his countenance by this shower of gravel, the Schoolmaster suffered still more severely by this last attack than by the blow from the stone. Becomepale, in spite of his livid and cicatrised features, he extended his two arms suddenly in the form of a cross, in a moment of inexpressible agony and despair, and, raising his frightful face to heaven, he cried, in a voice of deep suffering:
"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!"
This involuntary appeal to divine mercy by a man stained by every crime, a bandit in whose presence but ve
