muzzles and their quivering smellers towards
the gates by which they had entered, as if to
make sure of a retreat in case of need.

The first signs of timidity disappeared
when they found themselves joined by other
rats, who came in crowds to share the
banquet. Their numbers gave them mutual
encouragement; and the pavement began to
be blackened all over with reinforcements
of fresh regiments of rats. Balzac remarked
that, amongst these rats, there was a
progression of stature and strength from the first
to the last, or rather from the first
to those that followed, for the last had not
yet shown themselves. The earliest arrivals,
lean, long, and weakly, were followed by
others in better plight, who, in turn, were
followed by still more comely and thrifty
guests. The first comers were clearly the
hungriest.

Continuing the induction from their mien
and gait, Balzac attributed to each rat his
profession or his position in the social scale.
"Here comes a hanger-on at the attorney's
office, at twenty francs a month wages. That
next fellow is a clerk, with a salary of twelve
hundred francs a year; he is better filled out.
There goes another who lives on his property;
he has his immoralities, and is growing
bald." But the physiological description did
not last long.

The floor of the court disappeared under
an ever-thickening carpet of rats; there were
black rats, brown rats, tawny rats, yellow
rats, chestnut rats; rats of orders grey,
slate-coloured rats, and even white rats. Just
before it was completely covered, there
advanced from the mass a detachment of
rats, bolder and more adventurous than the
rest. They marched in three columns, and in
the form of a triangle, up to the carcase, of
which they took possession. It was a
successful military recognisance. Their other
companions, thus encouraged, charged with
much greater resolution. The leaders climbing
up the horse's flanks, ripped up its skin
from one end to the other, just as a tailor
unstitches an old coat to tear it up into rags;
and then hundreds, thousands, myriads of
rodents streamed in at every aperture, crowding
thick and anxiously, like an audience rushing
out of a theatre on fire. They scrambled
over one another; and their rustling
movements, their little shrill whistlings, inaudible
at first, produced by their multiplication the
hum and murmur of a crowd, in which you
could almost fancy you heard the sound of
human voices. Life was boiling in this
animated mass. It made you shudder to think
of what would be your fate were you to fall
into the midst of it from your perch on the
wall.

"Is it not fine?" exclaimed Brissot-
Thivars.

"Superb!" replied Balzac, with a salute
of the hand. "Splendid! Are your lions
there?"

"As you say, my lions. Do you hear them
roar?"

"I do hear them. Well roared Montfaucon!"

"Do you know," continued Brissot-Thivars,
pointing to the incalculable legions of fearful
destroyers who were heaving before his
eyes, "that if, one of these days, from some
cause not difficult to imagine, these clouds of
rats were to make a descent on Paris, a whole
quarter would either be devoured or be put
in terrible jeopardy?"

"Really?" demanded Balzac, delighted to
hear of the strange and dramatic danger to
which Paris was exposed.

"Nothing is more true. A landslip after
a tempest might bring about the event."

"Paris invaded by Montfaucon rats! What
a spectacle! Cannot we try the experiment?"
said Balzac, heated by his own idea.
"If, after the next thunder-storm, you could
induce a landslip, my dear Inspector——?"

"What, I! I who am charged with the
protection of Paris from all eventualities
which may arise from Montfaucon! You are
carrying the joke too far, my dear Monsieur
de Balzac. Do you not know——?"

"I am not joking at all," interrupted
Balzac.

"Silence!" said Dr. Gentil. "The grand
dissection is now going to begin."

The doctor was right. The Montfaucon
rats had opened the horse; and they cut it
up, bored it, riddled it through and through,
and chopped it into mincemeat—a work of
destruction which was hidden from sight a
few minutes afterwards, the horse having
completely disappeared beneath the hideous
brutes, who, hanging on with the voracious
precision of leeches to its rounded form, soon
offered the spectacle of a magnified horse
composed of thousands of living rats, after
the fashion of the shell-work toys and
ornaments that are made to represent men and
animals.

What a clash of arms! The gnashing of
their teeth was audible; the sound of the
knives and forks readied the ears of the
spectators in the boxes. Amongst these
indefatigable gluttons, there were some as
large as a full-grown tom-cat. But what cat
would risk an encounter with such
adversaries as these? He would have been
devoured as easily as a partridge by a fox;
he would have been swallowed whole before
he reached the ground.

"It is time!" shouted Brissot-Thivars, by
way of word of command to one of the
men who, mounted on the wall, lighted up
this scene with a pot of burning resin. "It is
time!"

At this order from the chief, the man
designated, threw his torch into the arena; it
fell a short distance from the spot where the
jackals of Montfaucon were finishing their
orgie. There was a shower of fire upon these
greedy epicures; nothing else than a downfall