consciousness of its mighty monotonous rhythm: but he knew that it was
there, that it never ceased, like the ocean roaring in the night. In the
music of it he found once more the same energy that he gained from it
whenever he bathed in its waters. He rose to his feet. He was fortified.
No: the hard life that he led contained nothing of which he need be
ashamed: he could eat the bread he earned, and never blush for it: it was
for those who made him earn it at such a price to blush and be ashamed.
Patience! Patience! The time would come....

But next day he began to lose patience again: and, in spite of all his
efforts, he did at last explode angrily, one day during a lesson, at the
silly little ninny, who had been maddeningly impertinent and laughed at his
accent, and had taken a malicious delight in doing exactly the opposite
of what he told her. The girl screamed in response to Christophe's angry
shouts. She was frightened and enraged at a man whom she paid daring to
show her no respect. She declared that he had struck her--(Christophe had
shaken her arm rather roughly). Her mother bounced in on them like a Fury,
and covered her daughter with kisses and Christophe with abuse. The butcher
also appeared, and declared that he would not suffer any infernal Prussian
to take upon himself to touch his daughter. Furious, pale with rage,
itching to choke the life out of the butcher and his wife and daughter,
Christophe rushed away. His host and hostess, seeing him come in in an
abject condition, had no difficulty in worming the story out of him: and it
fed the malevolence with which they regarded their neighbors. But by the
evening the whole neighborhood was saying that the German was a brute and a
child-beater.

* * * * *

Christophe made fresh advances to the music-vendors: but in vain. He found