This humming had no sort of tune or purpose, and was but
a vague musical sputtering. He almost perilled the gravity of the oath
they all took to Valmond by this idiosyncrasy. His occupation gave him a
lean, arid look; his hair was crisp and straight, shooting out at all
points, and it flew to meet his cap as if it were alive. He was a genius
after a fashion, too, and at all the feasts and on national holidays he
invented some new feature in the entertainments. With an eye for the
grotesque, he had formed a company of jovial blades, called
Kalathumpians, after the manner of the mimes of old times in his beloved
Dauphiny.
"All right, all right," he said, when Lagroin, in the half-lighted
blacksmith shop, asked him to swear allegiance and service. "'Brigadier,
vous avez raison,'" he added, quoting a well-known song. Then he hummed a
little and coughed. "We must have a show"--he hummed again--"we must
tickle 'em up a bit--touch 'em where they're silly with a fiddle and
fife-raddy dee dee, ra dee, ra dee, ra dee!" Then, to Valmond: "We gave
the fools who fought the Little Corporal sour apples in Dauphiny, my
dear!"
He followed this extraordinary speech with a plan for making an ingenious
coup for Valmond, when his Kalathumpians should parade the streets on the
evening of St.
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