It was easy to say "_Allez-vous en--va!_" and I said it, not once, but
again and again, each time more emphatically than before. Nobody paid
the slightest attention, however, except, perhaps to find an extra spice
of pleasure in tormenting me. If I had been a yapping miniature lap-dog,
with teeth only _pour faire rire_, I could not have been treated with
greater disdain by the crowd. I glanced hastily round to see if Sir
Samuel had not taken alarm; but, sitting beside his wife in the big
crystal cage, he seemed blissfully unconscious of danger to his splendid
Aigle. Instead, the couple looked rather pleased than otherwise to be a
centre of attraction.

"Perhaps," I thought, "they're right, and these young wretches can work
no real harm to the car. They ought to know better than I--"

But they didn't; for before the thought could spin itself out in my
mind, a gypsy-eyed little fiend of twelve or thirteen made a spring at
the driver's seat. With a yelp of mischievous glee he proved his daring
to his comrades by snatching at the starting-lever. He was quick as a
flash of summer lightning, but if I hadn't been quicker, the big car
might have leaped into life, and run amuck through the most crowded
street in busy Marseilles. I felt myself go cold and hot, horribly
uncertain whether my interference might work harm or good, but before I
quite knew what I did, I had sent the boy flying with a sounding box on
the ear.

He squealed as he sprawled backward, and I stood up, ready for battle,
my fingers tingling, my heart pounding. The imp was up again, in half a
breath, pushed forward by his friends to take revenge, and I could hear
Sir Samuel or her ladyship wrestling vainly with the window behind me.