Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/291

Rh ready to turn into the very avenue where the outrage was being perpetrated, there was a revival of hootings and vociferations, and he heard the name of the beloved mingled with homicidal outcries.

The next instant, he rushed into the fray, his strength increased tenfold, as he pushed aside the sinister onlookers, scattering the cannibals with furious blows. With the cry of a tigress bending over her cub, he disengaged Guidon, who lay there unconscious, bruised, his clothes in rags and stained with stuprous filth; kissed him and raised him in his arms.

His stature seemed magnified.

Armed with a cane, he struck out right and left all around him, as, with his face to the scamps and furies, he slowly backed towards the park, the crowd opening out to let him pass. But Landrillon and Claudie rallied the others, who were, for the moment, cowed by this majestic intervention.

There was a redoubling of the insults; the attack was now turned with fury from young Govaertz to the Dykgrave. Nobody took his part. His most devoted partisans, the beggars of Klaarvatsch, when they heard the accusation which weighed upon him, held