This was an awful moment. With mingled feelings of ecstasy and awe, Gros-Alain and Georgette saw René-Jean frown, stiffen his limbs, clench his fists, and push the massive quarto off the desk. It is really quite tragical to see a stably old book treated with such disrespect. The heavy volume, pushed from its resting-place, hung a moment on the edge of the desk, hesitating, as if it were trying to keep its balance; then it fell, crumpled and torn, with disjointed clasps and loosened from its binding, all flattened out upon the floor. Luckily, it did not fall on the children.
They were startled, but not crushed. The results of conquest have sometimes proved more fatal.
Like all glories, it was accompanied by a loud noise and a cloud of dust.
Having upset the book, René-Jean now came down from the chair.
For a moment, silence and dismay prevailed; for victory has its terrors. The three children clung to one another's hands and gazed from a distance upon the ruins of this monstrous volume.
After a brief pause, However, Gros-Alain went up to it with an air of determination and gave it a kick.
This was quite enough; the appetite for destruction is never sated. René-Jean gave it a kick too, and Georgette gave it another, which landed her on the floor, but in a sitting position, of which she at once took advantage to throw herself on Saint Bartholomew. All respect was now at an end. René-Jean and Gros-Alain pounced upon it, jubilant, wild with excitement, triumphant, and pitiless, tearing the prints, slashing the leaves, tearing out the markers, scratching the binding, detaching the gilded leather, pulling the nails from the silver corners, breaking the parchment, defacing the noble text,--working with hands, feet, nails, and teeth; rosy, laughing, and fierce, they fell upon the defenceless evangelist like three angels of prey.
They annihilated Armenia, Judea, and Benevento, where the relics of the saint are to be found; Nathanael, who is supposed by some authorities to be the same as Bartholomew; Pope Gelasius, who declared the Gospel of Nathanael-Bartholomew apocryphal; and every portrait and map. Indeed, they were so utterly engrossed in their pitiless destruction of the old book, that a mouse ran by unobserved.