About two, the bear-leader, a tall, rough-looking fellow, with red ragged
hair and beard, and mounting a high sugar-loafed hat, pushed the door
ajar, and cried, looking in--
"Just going to begin the fight!"
In an instant all the tables were emptied, many an untasted glass being
left upon it. I ran to the hay-loft, climbed up the ladder four steps at a
time, and drew it up after me. There, seated all alone upon a bundle of
hay, just inside the little skylight, I had a capital view.
What a throng! The old galleries were bending under their weight, the
roofs were visibly swaying. I shuddered to think of what might happen.
It seemed inevitable that they would all come down together like grapes
in the wine-press, heaped up in a sea of heads.
They were hanging in clusters on the wooden pillars; yet higher in the
gutters along the roof; yet higher about the pigeon-cote; higher still
over the skylights in the roof of the _mairie_; yet higher in the spire
of St. Christopher's; and all this multitude were howling and shouting--
"The bears! the bears!"
When I had sufficiently admired and wondered at the immense crowd,
looking down I saw in the middle of the court a poor, wretched,
depressed-looking donkey, lean and ragged, his sleepy eyes half-closed,
his ears hanging down.
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