"I don't understand anything about all that."

"My dear Monsieur Pioche, that does not matter in the slightest. It is the best of reasons why you should appoint me your representative."

"I do not understand," the rustic persisted stolidly.

"Mon Dieu! Monsieur Pioche," Master Populus continued, "it is very simple; promise me your vote. See what I can do for you. You pay the Seigneur twenty-six livres annual feudal rent of your holding."

"No, twenty-seven."

"Well, say twenty-seven. Now I am the intendant of this new young fool of a Seigneur, who is away all the time at Versailles. I have the sole control. Let us strike a bargain. Give me your vote and I will quietly let you off ten livres of rental. If I wish, I can find some reason for reporting you at seventeen."

Pioche's eyes assumed an uncertain light of cunning and greed.

"Don't do it, Pioche," cried a one-eyed cobbler. "Notary Mule offers to abolish all these Seigneur's rights if we elect him to the States-General."

"Shut up, you tan-smelling bow-legs!" the enraged Populus retorted at a shout. "Who is this Mule, that he should represent the majesty of the bailiwick of Grelot? A cur whose very name is enough to relegate him to limbo; whose deeds are atrocities in ink, whose——"

"Nevertheless he is going to lift our dues. Master Mule is the people's man," the cobbler returned valiantly.

"What, Mule!" cried Populus with still greater scorn. "Where has he the power? Am I not the intendant? Is it not I who alone control the dues in my own person? Yes, gentlemen, who will deny that I hold, so to speak, the keys of heaven and earth in Grelot, and whom I bind shall be bound and whom I loose shall be loosed, notwithstanding the impotent cajolery of all the long-eared Mules in the kingdom?"

The whole population of the village were by this time gaping around him.

"What, you clapper-jawed thief," a voice thundered from behind, "you venture to malign my name—the honourable appellation of a respectable family! Know, sir, that I spit upon you, I strike you, I say bah to your face!"

Maitre Mule was a little round-faced man, forced by his physical inferiority to Populus to take out his valour by word of mouth.

The two went at it with recriminations, from which Germain learnt much of his own affairs. The noise of the pair shouting and threatening to fight together, and the riotous cries of the crowd, "No dues!" "Notary, give us bread!" grew at length so great that the innkeeper rushed out exclaiming, "Peace, Messieurs, peace. I have a gentleman from Paris sleeping upstairs. See, there is the baker's shop just open."

The word "baker" operated better than magic. The rioters rushed over to the wicket, which was fixed in the door of the shop, and fought and snarled with each other for their slender purchases of the bread of famine.

Such were the daily incidents which were leading men on to revolution.



CHAPTER XLIII

BACK AT EAUX TRANQUILLES

"I will alter all this," Germain determined.

Wrapping his cloak closely round him and lowering his hat to prevent recognition he mounted his horse in the courtyard of the inn and rode on.

He might have taken a path directly through his own park to the chateau, but he preferred the highway to Fontainebleau, and, passing the gates of Eaux Tranquilles, entered the great forest.

With what emotions did not the sight of that neighbourhood thrill him. He slacked rein to a walk, rode thoughtfully through the bare but smiling woods and picturesque openings, and stopped with deep feeling at the spring where he first met the generous benefactor of his life. It was now sparkling like crystal—its basin fringed with ice. Tears rose in his eyes and fell freely as he brought his steed into the same position as when the Chevalier had first addressed him, and he eagerly strained his sorrowful imagination to discern again the kindly features of the old man's face and look into his eyes once more.

"I was unworthy of you, my benefactor," he exclaimed. "Oh, may some path out of my misdoings be yet found which will satisfy your stainless standard!" Turning back he retraced his route and entered Eaux Tranquilles.



The gardens were deserted. He tied his horse to a seat and walked about. Amidst his emotions and reminiscences the beauty of the place, even in its wintry garb, gradually introduced into his thoughts a subdued, scarcely conscious strain of delight in its ownership. He came at last to the chateau, stood before it, and looked contemplatively along its facade. It was almost too grand to seem by any possibility his, yet in very truth he was lord of Eaux Tranquilles and all its manors.

Sounds of unseemly revelry within fell upon his ear. He listened a moment, and then stepping up to the great door struck the knocker. The butler himself opened. He was half drunk, and as he was a man who had been engaged from Paris since Germain's visit he did not know the latter.

"What do you want, disturbing gentlemen's diversions?" he exclaimed insolently. "Who told you to come to this estate?"

"Its master."

"You lie. Do you want me to set the dogs on you?"

"You will neither set the dogs on me nor tell me I lie," Germain said quietly, and stepped past him into the hall.

"What do you say?" the butler shouted, foaming at the mouth and trying to seize Germain, who foiled him by drawing his sword. "Jacques! Jovite! Constant! 'Lexandre! here; put a canaille pig out who defies me!"

The door of an adjoining chamber opened, showing a table covered with glasses and bottles of choice wines, and three or four footmen in disordered liveries rushed out with some of the bottles and glasses in their hands. At the sight of Germain's face one after another stood stock still and fell upon his knees.

The butler swore savagely. He saw what had happened.

"Who is this man?" asked Germain severely of the footmen.

"Cliquet, the butler, Monsieur," stammered Constant, the oldest. "He was not here when your lordship was."

"Take him out of the gates," replied the new master, "and send for my intendant."

Not long after Master Populus entered his presence, bowing and scraping, with a dozen smiles at once on his face.

"So you are the intendant?" said Germain.

"I have the honour, Monsieur le Chevalier—the greatest honour in seven parishes, Monsieur."

"Be good enough to pardon me—you have no honour at all, sir.'

"How? what?" gasped Populus.

"None whatever. You are a rascal; but as long as I can make you behave yourself you shall remain intendant. You misrepresent my rent-rolls."

"Not at all——"

"Listen to me. You bargain away my dues with my censitaires."

"Nev——"

"You permit my butlers to drink out of my wine cellars. I warrant you have the pick of them at your own table."

The Attorney did not know whether he was standing on his head or his heels, for the hit was correct.

"Finally," Germain went on deliberately, "you 'hold the keys of heaven and earth in Grelot,' and snap your fingers at 'this new young fool of a Seigneur who is away all the time at Versailles.'"

Master Populus seemed powerless to move or speak as he stood fiery-faced in the middle of the floor, looking despairingly at Germain, who was seated, very coolly glancing him over.

"Well, Master Populus, what do you think?" he proceeded, smiling, after, pausing a moment. "Do you wish to continue the holding of the keys of heaven and earth? If so you must do it on my terms. And my terms are these—no more lying, no more false accounts, no more stealing from my poor, no more liberties taken with the property and people in your charge. Do you agree?"

The boldness of the opponent of Master Mule had evaporated. Two meek and scarcely whispered words alone left his lips—

"Yes, sir."

"Another thing. Are you willing to choose my intendancy at a fair profit rather than election to the States-General and glory?"

A white wave passed over Populus' countenance. At length, however, he again whispered—

"Yes, sir."

"Well, then, Monsieur Intendant, we can proceed to business. How much grain have I in the granaries? I have the books here."

"About four thousand bushels of wheat."

"In the book are entered two thousand."

"That is my mistake, sir."

"And of barley how much?"

"Seven thousand."

"You entered it four here. Another mistake, no doubt. See that there are no such mistakes in future. My instructions to you then, Monsieur Intendant, are to take the whole of this wheat and distribute it among our starving people under the instructions of the parish priests. Superintend this at once."



CHAPTER XLIV

SELF-DEFENCE

Dominique made an incomparable butler. It boots not to tell how, under his military sway, the servants seemed almost to acquire the new Prussian drill; the stores and cellars were listed with the system of a commissariat, dust disappeared like magic from gildings and parquetry, and order and state surrounded "the young Chevalier" in all his movements.

But above all the new maitre d'hotel energetically carried out the immediate wish of his master, and soon everything was ready for an event to which Germain was looking forward with supreme delight—the coming of Cyrene to see her future home. The day arrived. The Canoness accompanied her. The ecstasy of the lovers as they clasped each other in the place of their first meeting may be left unwritten. Very often was the Canoness constrained to absorb herself in her little illuminated prayer-book.

Eight or nine days after the event, the time arrived when it was customary at Eaux Tranquilles for the tenants to pay their feudal dues, and Germain was alone in the office of the chateau, looking over the ancient titles of de Bailleul's inheritances, preparatory to receiving the "faith and homage" of his subjects.

"I must go no farther," he was saying to himself. "She must not marry me without knowing everything. The time has come for confession, and I must spare myself in nothing. What will she think of me when she knows how false I have been?"

At that point Dominique stepped in gravely and shut the door.

"They are at some mischief in Grelot," he said.

"Against me?"

"It looks that way."

"How? I saw nothing of it yesterday."

The day before being Sunday, Germain had gone over alone in his coach to attend High Mass in the parish church. The people standing about the front doors greeted him respectfully, and he passed up the aisle and took his seat in his raised and curtained pew. The priest, as was customary, had named him in the prayers as patron of the church, he was the first to be passed the blessed bread, and the congregation even received with subdued approbation a warm reference in the sermon to his distribution of wheat to the poor. His leaving was treated in as respectful a manner. How then, one day later, could the Grelotins be at mischief against him?

"It was that Mule and that trash of a Cliquet. They were haranguing the people after Mass—something about a thing Mule calls the Third Estate. Nobody knows what it is—but everybody thinks it belongs to himself and that the aristocrats want to take it from him. So everybody got into a rage against the aristocrats (save your honour), and Mule brought them over to the tavern hall, ordered everybody's fill of brandy, and read out something from the King. He told them the King was on their side, and for all to tell out their complaints against the Seigneur. So everybody began to think if he had complaints, and Master Mule wrote them into a copybook. When Mule read it out, the people groaned and cried that they never knew they had had so many miseries. Cliquet shouted that you were the cause of all these miseries; that you had grain while the peasants were starving, and that they ought to drive you out of the country and then would all be well."

They were startled by a musket-shot so near the house that Dominique hastened to the window to look. Germain sprang up too. The office faced at the rear, close to the old chateau and lake.

A rough fellow with a gun was coolly standing near the great dovecot and shooting at the pigeons. Dominique threw open the window and shouted. The answer was a gesture of derision.

Germain rang furiously for the lackeys. For answer Jovite and 'Lexandre ran up, pale, and out of their wits, reporting that "the brigands" were invading the front of the house.

"Go and find what is the matter, Dominique," Lecour said, and sprang up to seek for Cyrene, but checking himself, crossed the corridor and went to a front window.

He saw a multitude trooping down the gardens from the gates and walls, over which in the distance he could descry them swarming, and forming a sort of semicircle around the entrance door. The vanguard were led by a drum and a violin. The expressions on the faces of the men were wild and haggard, most wore greasy bonnets of wool, some huge wooden shoes, some hobnailed ones, and over their shoulders or in their hands protruded their weapons—pitchforks, scythes, flails, knives, clubs, and rusty guns. All must have been several thousand, collected from every hamlet in his territory. They seemed like a legion of some spectre army of Hunger and Ignorance. In the commander Germain recognised his discharged butler.

The Canoness he descried escaping, unseen by them, with the aid of a gardener, across the pond into the park. He withdrew from the window and fled quickly towards the chamber of Cyrene. She likewise was seeking him, and in a passage they rushed into each other's arms.

"Where is the Canoness?" she exclaimed.

"She is gone, she was warned," he said. "You know there is danger, love?"

"I see it," she answered.

"Come," he urged her, "the office is strong, we may have to defend ourselves."

Thither, therefore, they returned and anxiously awaited Dominique, each fearful of the safety of the other. For the moment the protection of the house had to be trusted wholly to the Auvergnat.

Dominique was absent about fifteen minutes, during which Germain could hear the servants barring the doors, and voices surrounding the house in all directions. The valet returned and related his observations. After making the doors fast and collecting the female servants in the hall, he had carefully looked out of the wicket of the grand entrance, and seeing no one approaching, opened, and going out to the head of the steps, inquired of the mob their errand. He was met by a hurly-burly of cries.

"Long live Liberty! Long live the King! Death to the aristocrats! Long live the nation!"

"What do you seek of Monsieur le Chevalier?"

"His head!" cried Cliquet.

"Bread, bread!" shouted the sabot-maker.

But two others came forward and more rightly interpreted the chief and quaint demand of the ignorant peasants. They demanded all his parchments and title-deeds to burn; "for," said they sententiously, "we shall then be freed of rents and dues, which are now abolished by the King." Some of the bolder rioters had even started a fire to burn the documents.

"And if he does not give them up?"

"We must cut off his head and burn down his chateau. We are sorry, but it is the King's order."

Dominique, in reporting, made no suggestions; instead, he waited for instructions. Lecour thought a moment. He came to the conclusion to try severity. "Tell them," said he, "that unless they are quiet I will make parchments of their skins."

Cyrene caught his arm, but the answer had already gone.

Dominique dropped the role of butler for his old ones of soldier. He saluted, and marched down to deliver the message. A hush was heard for a few moments, then the entrance door slammed, and an instant after all the windows in the mansion seemed to shatter simultaneously before a tremendous volley of musketry and stones. Every wall and casement shook with the shouts and racketing sounds of a fierce and general attack.

Germain and Cyrene shuddered. The noise awoke them to the seriousness of the situation. It brought them face to face with that terrible storm whose thunderclouds were now thickly darkening over France—the death-dealing typhoon of the Revolution. A proud thought came into his head. "My time is come. I shall die defending her."

"Do you and all the servants save yourselves," he said to Dominique. And he took two pistols from the drawer and laid them on the table, looking into Cyrene's eyes.

"No, my master," Dominique returned, "if you die, I will die with you. I know my duty. But let us at least defend ourselves well."

"See that the others escape, and especially the women. It is not right for them, who are from the country here, to be embroiled with their relatives. Tell them on no account to open the outer doors, or they run the risk of massacre, but to make terms through their friends in the mob."

It was only a question of minutes when the besiegers should succeed in breaking a door or scaling the walls to the windows and making their entrance. From the office windows they could see a score of those in the rear running forward across the grounds with a ladder which they had secured in the stables. Passing again to the front of the house, Lecour saw the mob angrily tearing up garden benches and summerhouses for the same purpose. An active crowd besides, under the urging of Cliquet, was battering the main door with a beam. The fire, lit for his parchments was blazing merrily, and a man with a shock of matted hair, by a sudden impulse snatched a long brand and raised the cry of "Burn him up!" Others sprang forward to do the same, and fought for the blazing pieces, but Cliquet bounded down the steps and knocked the matted-hair man down.

"Curse you!" he shouted. "You will spoil the whole business. You don't know how many good things are in there for us."

Dominique returned from the servants. "They are well arranged for," said he.

Cyrene tremblingly caught Germain's arm, excited with a new idea. "To the old chateau! not a moment to lose!" she cried, and seizing Lecour by the arm hurried him into the passage which communicated between the new mansion on land and the ancient one in the lake, while Dominique followed. Half-way across was a decayed wooden door, which once had done duty as a gate behind the portcullis. They shut and bolted this with all speed, and then turned to look round them. The crash of the main door falling and the shout of the mob which followed, penetrated to their retreat.

"We have plenty of powder and pistols," Dominique exclaimed; "there is the armoury just at our backs."

The armoury, in truth, was close at hand and in it an ample selection of old-fashioned weapons.

"Let us place this to command the passage," Germain said, touching a bronze cannon, after they had taken some pistols and powder.

"Very good, my General," Dominique assented excitedly, and pushing the rusty trunnion they got it into position. It was an ornate affair, which had been for centuries discharged by the de Bailleuls on the birthdays of the family. Cyrene had the good judgment to remain in the armoury.

It was several hours before they were discovered. The reason, as they concluded by listening at the door in the passage, was the exploring of the wine-cellars by the besiegers, under the guidance of Cliquet. Blows, shouts, and crashes indicated numerous acts of destruction. Inevitably, however, they were at last found out by Cliquet himself, who could not forego the delights of revenge. He came to the wooden door.

"Baptism, dame, I have you now, you cursed young white-gill!" cried he. "Break it in, my boys, smash, hack. We'll roast him in place of his parchments—the man who will make parchments of our skins."

Lecour ran back to take a moment's glance at Cyrene. She was kneeling at prayer. He withdrew, grasped his pistols with renewed determination, and stood at his post.

Lecour and Dominique were quite ready—the latter with his fuse, the former with a pistol in each outstretched hand and the need of saving Cyrene in his fast-beating heart. They were disciplined soldiers, the mob was not. No sooner had the door fallen in and the crowd of attackers rushed into the passage, than the roar of the cannon was heard, its flame was seen, a cloud of sulphurous smoke thickly filled the passage, and a mass of mutilated and shrieking creatures covered the floor. A terrible sorrow for his suffering tenants surged over Germain. A dreadful silence fell upon the rest of the house, followed by mingled sounds of confusion in the distance, and soon the main multitude itself appeared, pressing forward towards the passage.

Lecour, with his pistols undischarged, again stood immovably covering Dominique, as he deliberately and rapidly reloaded, and once more while the crowd still pressed on a torrent of shrapnel poured into them, sickening all finally of the attempt.

The two army men thus remained temporary masters of the situation, but they knew that the advantage could not serve them long.

As for Cyrene she was weak with the shock, but insisted on making no complaints. He watched her anxiously and tenderly until she seemed somewhat recovered, but it was evident by her trembling limbs that a grave illness was but briefly postponed. The groans which came from the passage caused her to make several attempts to go to the sufferers, and she had to be gently restrained and removed by them to another part of the castle.

As dusk fell the two defenders moved cautiously forward among the horrors of the dead and dying, and once more rudely fastened up the door. It became clear that they must attempt an escape, for with the dark came fresh dangers.

Dominique remained on guard, while Lecour, taking a candle, went through the old castle, making a rapid survey. The night was clear and cold, the moon had not yet risen, and the darkness was sufficient to favour them. He selected a window for the attempt. Then, reckless of treasures, he cut down some of the old tapestries which lined the chambers, and slit off enough to twist into a rope. This would bring them to the level of the water, now thinly covered with ice.

"But will the ice bear us?"

"No, Monsieur, I started across this morning and it broke."

"Of what nature is it?"

"Soft, and bends, and your foot sinks through it."

"Very well, we can cross it."

He hurried back to one of the chambers where there were some of the de Bailleul portraits hanging, pulled them down with his own hands, and tore the frames of several apart. Their sides he attached as cross-bars to others, by means of strings ravelled from the canvas of the tapestries. The result was a makeshift for snowshoes. With these they escaped across the ice to the park, unnoticed by their enemies, who, by the lights in every part of the mansion, they could see were active and uproarious.

When at last, arriving at the gate of a chateau miles onward toward Paris they looked back they saw an immense blaze in the distance, and the heavens aglare from east to west with the conflagration. But the saving of Cyrene made up in Germain's heart for the loss of his mansion, and he felt as if by that as he had taken a step towards redemption.



CHAPTER XLV

THE NECESSITIES OF CONDITION

All through the long illness of Cyrene, which followed the revolt at Eaux Tranquilles, and especially after her first grief for the misguided men who had fallen in the corridor, her heart dwelt with great intensity on the destruction of her hope of a home. She recurred to it again and again in her conversations with him, until he ventured to mention to her the offer once made to him by Liancourt of the position of Commandant of the cadet school on his estates.

"Could you retire thither," said he, looking into her eyes with emotion, "away for ever from your friends, away from your rank, from the Court, and all that is so brilliant and belongs to you, to live your life along with a man of humble birth wholly unworthy of you? You speak of a quiet hearth and of abandonment of the world, but could you make a sacrifice so great as this?"

"Germain, love, do you not know me yet?" she answered, returning him a look of affection which profoundly troubled him. He knelt and kissed her hand in silence. "Is not love life itself?" she said, rising with difficulty from her arm-chair. "Let us go without delay and obtain permission," and, taking his hand, led him with steps slow and pitiably uncertain into the presence of the Marechale.

Madame was seated alone, mumbling to the count of her rosary, but on their appearance dropped it in her lap and resumed her usual bearing of dignity.

"Grand-aunt," began the Baroness, "we have a great boon to ask of you."

"What is it, Baroness?" she said.

"Grand-aunt," Cyrene repeated falteringly, "have you ever known what it is to love?"

The question astonished Madame l'Etiquette. For a moment it seemed as if a slight mounting of the blood to her wrinkled cheeks was visible. In the next her features resumed their stiffness, and she answered, "Tush! that is the business of citizenesses."

"You too have had your dream; I have heard of it," Cyrene persisted. "Women are women, whatever their sphere."

"Say illusion, perhaps, not dream; but the subject must cease. What do you want of me after this very malapropos preface?"

"I ask you to consent to our immediate marriage," Cyrene said with desperate directness, and tremblingly taking the chair which Germain proffered, sat down with white face, watching Madame de Noailles anxiously.

The latter did not reply.

"Grand-aunt," pled the young woman, "you have felt like us in your day, the longing for a home, a sweet refuge from the wretchedness of life. You had a lover to make you feel how sweet it might have been."

"Get these silly ideas out of your head," responded Madame l'Etiquette, ignoring Lecour, but speaking in a not unkindly manner. "Your rank demands an establishment, not a home. Monsieur understands that his position and yours are very different, and that two things at least are necessary in order to make your marriage possible—his standing as a Bodyguard, and a complete establishment. The riotous condition of his province makes the latter very dubious. You understand this, Monsieur de Lincy?"

"It must be admitted, Madame la Marechale," Lecour said sorrowfully.

"You have some sense, I observe."

"But I can live without an establishment. A position is open to Germain in the provinces as Commandant of a school," Cyrene exclaimed.

Madame uttered an exclamation so energetic, and she rose so fiercely from her chair that Cyrene stopped in dismay.

"Saints of heaven!" went on the Marechale, "is the family on the brink of a catastrophe? Can the Noailles, the Court, and the Crown afford to allow a Montmorency to annihilate herself? How dare you, forgetful of your relatives, your position, your descent from a hundred kings, advance such a proposal to the Chief Lady of Honour. I am something, Madame, and I intend to be considered, and to see that your family shall be considered. A pretty idea this, of rustic innocence and rural retirement, of straw bonnets and shepherding, of the new school to which you belong and who are the enemies of everything permanent. You are destroying customs to make way for theories, manners for boon comradeship, chivalry for finance, elegance for vulgarity, religion for atheism, and character for sentiment. You are to blame for all the present disorders, and such as you have brought about the burning of your own chateau. No, Madame, I will not permit the marriage. How dare you propose it to her, sir?"

Lecour said nothing. He could not.

Cyrene continued bravely.

"The matter is of the deepest concern—of infinite importance to us."

"I have decided it. I am the guardian of your future, and I intend to remain so."

"You are the lady head of the family and guardian of my future under the will of my father, but let me say without disrespect that I am a widow, and legally control my own right to dispose of my hand."

"You think you could disobey me? I could easily see to that. The King would refuse to sign the contract of marriage, and there my power would only begin."

"You cannot prevent us from at least marrying. The humblest French peasants have a right to that without any royal signature."

"Yes I can, and I will show you the power of the old school!" cried the dame, straightening herself with an inconceivable triumph and shaking out the folds of her brocade. "Monsieur de Lincy here knows well that I am right in preventing you from sacrificing your position. I call upon his honour as a noble not to allow this disgrace to fall upon you. I call upon it to sustain the head of your house. I call upon it to reverence the wish of the dead and the will of the King. You admit me right and just, Monsieur de Lincy? I call upon your honour as a noble. Answer me."

"There is but one way of replying," he returned slowly; and Cyrene in her very anguish showed her pride in his response to the fatal appeal to his honour.

"Well, then," Madame cried, partaking in that pride and changing her manner to one of much kindliness, "you have done well and are good children. Believe that my strictness shall endure no longer than is necessary. It is true that in the name of order I forbid your marriage, but I consent to your remaining affianced until these troubles of our country pass away or Monsieur obtains some establishment, no matter how small, if sufficient, and even though that should take as long as your lives may last. Kneel and receive an old woman's blessing."

With what disappointed and mingled feelings they knelt before her and bowed to the conquest of nature by the Old Regime.



CHAPTER XLVI

THE PATRIOTS

At midnight the full moon, silver-gilt, touched the house-fronts of the Street of the Hanged Man. They lit the figure and slouched hat of Jude, who, carrying a package, slunk up to the door of the Gougeon shop and was admitted. The Big Bench were in session. The light of the tallow-dip seemed to concentrate itself on the wicked smile of the Admiral as he watched Jude opening the packages.

"Do you know who sent this, gentlemen?" the spy cried, enjoying the importance of being the bearer of some surprise.

"We are not gentlemen, and we do not know," retorted Hache.

"It was a high personage, rowers—no less a personage than a prince—a royal prince."

"What have we to do with princes?"

"With the Duke of Orleans, much; rival to the throne, he is the friend of the people."

"Ah, yes, the friend of the people, and he wants us for something. That is a good contract," the Admiral interrupted. "Whose windpipe does he want to cut, and what does he promise to pay for it?"

"Nothing so risky; only some shouting, and as for the pay, here, Admiral, is the nose of the dog," and he handed him a full bag of coin.

The Admiral tore it open, and exhibited the metal to his greedy-eyed subordinates. Hache grabbed at a couple of the coins, and joyfully flipped them up to the ceiling.

"Now what does our friend the Duke of Orleans want? Our friend the Duke of Orleans, gentlemen," the Admiral added, smiling ironically.

"To wear these badges and shout for him," replied Jude, displaying the contents of his parcel, a couple of dozen red woollen tuques.

"No objection," the Admiral answered; "no objection in the world, but what is the object?"

"Well, Monsieur Admiral——"

"Shut up with your 'Monsieurs', spy," called Hache. "Do you want us hunted for aristocrats?"

"Well, Citizen Admiral then, you know how things have been going since last spring. In May there was the holding of States-General; in June the National Assembly confront the nobles and swear never to disperse; in July the Court menaces to suppress the Parisians by the army; on the eleventh the people slaughtered by the Dragoons; on the fourteenth——"

"The Bastille taken—I was there."

Exultation lit the ring of faces.

"Ragmen, we have had good times since the 14th of July," said the Admiral. "It is now becoming our turn. I always told you it was coming, but I am going to give you better still. You are going to learn to love the sight of red blood better than red wine."

"The aristocrats," Jude continued, "have been skipping over the frontiers; the people starving and rising to their rights; we hung Councillor Foulon to the lantern——"

"And put grass in his mouth, the old animal!" exclaimed Wife Gougeon with vicious hate.

"The King——" proceeded Jude.

"The Big Hog," shouted a Councillor savagely.

"The Big Hog, then, has had his bristles singed with all this: the people despise him. Orleans is the people's favourite. What if the Galley-on-Land should put Orleans on the throne?"

"Good!" cried the Admiral.

The Big Bench broke into excited comment.

"Citizen Jude is admirable." Their leader went on, "Nothing could be more acceptable than the money of a friend to the people. I tell you, ragmen, our time has come. There is nothing we cannot try."

"Let us garrott every gendarme."

"They keep well out of our way now, at least when single," another boasted.

"We don't loot enough houses," a third grumbled. "What is the good of belonging to the nation?"

"It is the sacred right of the citizen to oppress the oppressor," chimed Jude.

"Ragmen, you don't know what I mean," vociferated the Admiral sharply. "We are to be the great men—the Government. I have seen this ever since our sack of Reveillon's paper-factory. Everything belongs to the boldest. You will yet see our Big Bench legislators of Paris and me a Minister of France."

"Bravo; bravo the Admiral!"

The man who last entered, the Versailles beggar, now came to the centre.

"Listen, friends. You know that what I learn at Versailles is worth something to the Galley-on-Land."

"Invariably," said the Admiral.

"The Big Sow, you know, she they call Madame Veto, has been cursedly working to keep the Big Hog with the cursed hogs. The people are afraid of more Dragoons, and are crying, 'The King to Paris!' Well, now, this is the third of October. Yesterday afternoon the Bodyguard, as they call them—all fat hogs, mark you—gave a dinner in the theatre to the Flemish Dragoons. They were so glad to have Flemings to sabre Paris that the Big Sow came in, and they all spat on the people's cockade, and put on the White Hog colour, and also a black one, and vowed they were cocksure of shutting us up. They brought in the Big Hog from his hunting, and he is in the mess, too. At the end they all followed Madame Veto home, shouting everything to vex us patriots. I am a patriot," he added winking. "It is an outrage on the nation. We must go to Versailles. We must bring the Big Hog into our bosoms, away from the Bad Hogs. Do you see?"

"I am in it," cried Hache.

"An incomparable scheme," said the Admiral. "Brave Greencaps, don't you see before you all the swag in the great chateau of Versailles? My God! it is a pretty scheme—a scheme worthy of a Galley-on-Land."

Even Gougeon seemed to be waked up, and fixed his greedy black eyes on Motte.

"Citizens," the Admiral continued, addressing Wife Gougeon. "This is better begun by the women. This morning you will go the Fish-market and stir the fishwomen up. You must learn the lingo of patriotess. Scream hard that 'The nation is in danger!' 'Down with the enemies of the republic!' Talk of 'the excellent citizen,' 'the true patriots,' 'the good sans-culottes.' Be 'filled with sacred vigour' against 'the vile aristocrats.' We 'work for liberty,' we 'bear the nation in our hearts,' and 'fulfil a civic duty.' 'Against traitors, perpetual distrust is the weapon of good citizens,' and 'away with the prejudices of feudalism!' You can pick up carts-full of the lingo at the Palais Royal."

"I don't understand that bosh," blurted Hache.

"You learn it in two instants, Hache."

"Wait till I tell you another thing, Admiral," Motte interposed. "There are now twenty thousand ragmen from the provinces encamped on the hills of Montmartre, fit for everything good. I have been through them, and when a St. Marcellese holds his nose, you may fancy. Man never saw such a choice crowd of breechesless. Get them started and go to the women to-morrow."

"To-morrow, then, let it be. The cries are to be 'Bread' and 'The King to Paris,' the fishwomen to lead; the Big Bench sign to be the red wool of 'our Friend Orleans'; then sack the bakers; then the Hotel de Ville; then the chateau of Versailles; and death to every black or white cockade."



CHAPTER XLVII

THE DEFENCE OF THE BODYGUARD

Word passed about at the stately tea a l'Anglaise of the Princess de Poix that there was danger at the Palace.

"Germain, my knight," whispered Cyrene at the harpsichord, the bright tears in her eyes, "I must not keep you now. Go to the Queen. It is for times of peril that descendants of chivalry were born."

Tenderly kissing her hand and saying adieu, Lecour drove to the Palace and reported for service.

The great Hall of the Guards in the centre of the Palace faces the top of the Marble Staircase. To the left a landing leads to the Hall of the King's Guards and thence, to the apartment of the King; to the right another to the Hall of the Queen's Guards and the chambers of Marie Antoinette.

The Marble Staircase was approached by the Court of Marble, the smallest and innermost courtyard of the vast chateau, looked out upon by the royal apartments and paved with white marble. The exit from this was to the Royal Court, whence through a grating to the Court of the Ministers, and thence through the outer grating by the entrance gate to the Place d'Armes.

Though the season was yet early in October, it was as gloomy and forbidding a night as one in the worst of November. The darkness and chill were aggravated by a wearisome drizzle. They were further aggravated by the discomforts of an anxious situation. About fifty Bodyguards, lying and sitting under arms in the Hall, were trying to spend the night, or rather the early hours before dawn, entertaining each other. They were mainly of the command of the Count de Guiche, then in its turn of service, but a number among them wore cross-belts of other companies, for the need had been pressing, and all within reach had been hastily summoned. The reason for anxiety was a great invasion of women from Paris on the afternoon of the previous day headed by "a conqueror of the Bastille." A deputation of twelve of these women were led to the King, who satisfied and pleased them by his kindness, but the rest of the crowd, brandishing knives through the railing, accused these of treachery and tried to hang them. Outside the Palace on the Place d'Armes the numbers were increased by horde after horde of men marching from the slums of Paris, armed with pikes, muskets, and hatchets, and full of drink. After dark many had filled the streets, knocking at the houses demanding food and money, and terrifying the town. The sentinels, the Bodyguards, and the Flemish regiment had with difficulty rescued the women of the deputation, kept the gates and held the mob at bay. They were jeered at and even fired on, whereat one or two of the Bodyguards had fired back. The filthy furies, drunken and degraded to an extent of degradation almost unknown to-day, were especially foul-mouthed regarding the poor Queen. As for Wife Gougeon, she had stood out on the very floor of the Assembly, flourished her dagger and screamed "Where can I find the Austrian?"

At length rain and night brought a certain cessation, and with them hopes rose. The troops were withdrawn at eight. The main portion of the Bodyguard were sent to Rambouillet in the vicinity, as they seemed to excite antagonism among some companies of the National Guard or militia of Versailles. About twelve in the evening, General Lafayette, of American fame, came up at the head of the militia of Paris and took command of the external defences of the chateau.

The mob were still, however, permitted to camp out on the Place d'Armes.

"What are they doing now?" a tired officer of the Bodyguards asked of another, who had come in and was giving his dripping cloak to one of the King's lackeys.

"They are mostly asleep, on the Place. It is all over hillocks of rags."

"In the rain?"

"So it seems; it does not wet that sort."

"They must be hungry."

"Not at all. They have each his or her bottle of drink; besides, they roasted and ate our comrade's horse that they shot by the light of their bonfire. It was looking on at a cannibal's feast to see them dancing round it, men and women."

"More so had it been an ass's carcase, perhaps."

"Say a wolf's. If there is a breed of human wolves, I have had it proved to me to-night. The difference between these and the kind in the Menagerie is that it is we who are within the bars."

"You need not offer the breed as a novelty; I saw plenty of them at Eaux Tranquilles."

The speakers were Grancey and Germain. The Baron's face was full of indignation; Lecour's of platonic contempt.

The door of the Hall of the King's Guards opened, and the sentinels saluted for a Duke, while the Prince of Luxembourg entered. The Guards who were awake aroused their comrades. All sprang to their arms and saluted.

"Gentlemen," said the Prince, "you will be glad to know that his Majesty has such trust in your faithfulness that he is sleeping as quietly as usual."

A shout of "Vive le Roi!" arose.

The Prince withdrew. From the opposite door—that of the Hall of the Queen, now came out Monsieur d'Aguesseau, Mayor of the Guard, who was making the disposition of sentries.

The contingent, who were still standing, turned to him with looks of anxiety, and Lecour, as spokesman for the rest, said respectfully—

"How sleeps the Queen?"

"Her Majesty, alas! does not sleep. She starts up continually, haunted by the foul insults of yesterday and the immense unmerited hatred of the people of France. What a load for a woman to bear!"

The cry of "Vive la Reine!" which had been ready went forth only as a low murmur.

"Gentlemen," said d'Aguesseau, "our duty may be grave before long. General Lafayette has, it is true, assumed the external defence of the Palace with the National Guard of Paris. At the same time, we must remember that that Guard are now scattered among the churches of the town and fast asleep, while the invaders are a countless multitude at our doors, and we but a handful. On us depend, as on a thread, the lives of our King and Queen and of all these helpless persons of the household. Remember, sirs, that your time to die, the soldier's hour of glory, may now have come."

A shoot of "Vive le Roi!" from every throat was again the response. It echoed through the windows across the Court of Marble and down the Great Staircase. It was memorable as the last loyal cry of the household of Versailles.

"The hour has arrived to change guard," Mayor d'Aguesseau went on. "Will you, Monsieur de Lincy, take command in the Hall of the Queen?"

D'Aguesseau passed on to inspect the precautions at other points of the Palace.

No sooner had he left than the men disposed themselves with serious faces for active work. A sympathetic feeling of devotion displayed itself. Suddenly Des Huttes, the best voice in the company of Noailles, struck up solemnly that tender reminiscence from the opera of "Richard Coeur de Lion"—

"Oh, Richard, oh my King, the world forsaketh thee,"

and the Bodyguards, overcome with emotion, one and all stood still with bended heads.

It was then about three o'clock.

In four hours' more the French Monarchy was to fall and the ancient regime to pass like a dream. The east wind dashed a terrible gust of rain against the windows and shook their panes like a summons.

* * * * *

"Oh, Richard, oh my King, the world forsaketh thee," haunted Germain as he paced the Hall of the Queen's Guards. Recent political events connected with the drawing up of a national constitution, and the hunger of the poor, which they naturally blamed on those in power, had, he knew, raised deep animosity towards Louis XVI. and the Queen. Her thoughtless life of gaiety in past days, and the greedy demands of her friends the Polignacs, had made her particularly the mark of venomous hate. As d'Aguesseau said, "what a load for a woman to bear!" The thought raised in Lecour the deepest pity. Opposite him was the door of the first antechamber, called the Grand Couvert, where had posted Varicourt, and within it some dozen others. There Varicourt stood, handsome and elegantly uniformed, at that beautiful door in that fine hall. Yet behind all this elegance what misery! The Canadian could not suppress the vision of the tortured Queen starting out of her sleep in her chamber a few paces away. This suffering woman was in his charge—he must be loyal to her and lay down his life before hers should be taken. Well, he had faced death before—it had not yet quite come to that; but he would be loyal and true. Oh, if he could only cross for a few minutes to the Noailles mansion and have a word with Cyrene. Was she in danger too? His heart ached with anxiety.

So the hours of the night passed.

A little before six, while he was resting on a bench and all seemed quiet, he suddenly heard shouting. He was startled, for it was much nearer than the Place d'Armes. Yes, there was no doubt of it; he heard a pistol-shot close by, and at the same time he sprang to his feet. There was a simultaneous stir in the Great Hall of the Guards, and de Varicourt, at the entrance to the Queen's antechamber, rapidly drew his sword. So did du Repaire, sentinel at the door to the Marble Staircase.

Germain ordered Miomandre de Ste. Marie, another faithful Guardsman, who was posted at the door of the Great Hall, to go down the Marble Staircase and bring back a report of the trouble.

It afterwards appeared that the two of Lafayette's Paris militiamen posted at the outer gateway had betrayed their trust and let in the mob of viragoes and armed brigands who pressed for admittance early in the morning. Now commenced a season of terror in the Palace.

No sooner had Miomandre reached the head of the staircase, and Lecour looked after him out of the open door, than they both saw the court below alive with a lashing ocean of pikes and furious faces.

The two Swiss sentinels who kept the foot of the staircase had managed to check the rush, and for a moment the brigands checked themselves to get each a hack at an object they had thrown down. Lecour saw instantly that this object was a man—a Bodyguard—who, as with a tremendous effort he threw off his assailants and stood up, the streams of blood pouring over his face, he recognised as poor Des Huttes. Germain's first impulse was to bound down the steps to his rescue—but discipline did its work and checked him. Should he leave his post, what would become of the Queen? Des Huttes during the moment of this quick reflection, was brained from behind by a man in a red cap, and fell, pierced with countless pike-wounds. His eyes still moved when the rag-picker Gougeon ran in, and, placing his foot on the chest, chopped the head from the body with blows of an axe. In an instant it was stuck on the point of a pike and triumphantly carried away.

Lecour, his brain on fire, drew back and steadied himself to retain presence of mind.

An instant after he could hear the roar of the mob as it surged up and the voice of Miomandre shouting to them, "My friends, you love your King."

They rushed on Miomandre and tried to kill him as they had done Des Huttes; but he was quick, and springing to the embrasure of a window, defended himself, while the yelling booty-seekers, athirst for easier-seized treasures, turned to press forward into the apartment of the Queen. The attack came quickly, but Germain shut the door in time and locked it, and thanks to the perfect make of the lock its bolt held out against the onset. That could not long be, however, as he knew the panels must give way before their axes.

"Stand firm, du Repaire!" he cried, and ran across the hall to where de Varicourt was guarding the door of the Queen's antechamber. Before passing in, he grasped the hand of the devoted Bodyguard, who understood that his hour had come, crossed himself, and answered with a look of unalterable devotion.

Germain closed the door of the antechamber lovingly and regretfully, locked and bolted it.

The howling pack were but a few minutes in breaking in. He could hear their shouts of triumph and the shameless cries of the women against Marie Antoinette.

Astonished at finding themselves in the inside of the Palace, the first comers were dumbfounded, but a red-nosed beggar in a red cap immediately sprang towards de Varicourt, shouting, "This way to the Austrian!"

"Vive la Nation!" roared men who were looting the tapestry from the benches.

"Death to the Sow!" was the shriek of Wife Gougeon.

"Death to the aristocrat!" shouted the Admiral with a devilish laugh, leading the rush on de Varicourt.

The latter defended himself with all his strength, first with his clubbed musket, then with his sword. For some seconds he kept the murderers at bay, and it seemed to du Repaire, looking eagerly across the hall, that after all the impossible might be accomplished, and the valour of his comrade stem the accursed horde. To no purpose. As he turned like lightning to deliver a thrust to the left, a blow from a billhook on the right crushed his skull; he dropped, and his bleeding body was instantly robbed and dragged out to the Place d'Armes.

Meanwhile du Repaire, inspired by the heroic conduct of de Varicourt, took advantage of the momentary diversion to slip across and occupy his fallen comrade's post. The assailants, some of the boldest of whom had suffered from de Varicourt's sword, were astonished and daunted by the sight of another Bodyguard in the same place.

"Canaille! we know how to die!" he cried, and stood ready to strike the first on-comer.

"So do we!" cried the Admiral, and struck at him, but tripped and was pulled back.

"Save yourself, du Repaire, if you can," commanded Germain from within the door.

Seizing the moment's confusion, du Repaire sprang through the weakest part of the semicircle around him, and scattering the tramps in the rest of the hall before him, reached the door of the Great Hall of the Guards opposite, not without several wounds. The door was fortunately opened and Grancey, who opened it, emptied his pistol into the foremost pursuer and killed him, obtaining time to lock and bolt again.

The crowning instance of the spirit of the Bodyguard was now given. Miomandre de Ste Marie, who had sheltered himself from the first rush of the mob in the window embrasure at the head of the staircase, seeing the crowd rush after du Repaire, and not knowing of the command to abandon the post, sped over and stationed himself in the same position. Meanwhile, during the few minutes in which all this took place, Germain had opened the door of the Queen's drawing-room and said quietly to a lady of honour, "Save the Queen; they want to kill her." The ladies of honour bolted the drawing-room door, hurried to the Queen, hastily dressed her, opened a secret door in a panel near her bed, and hurried her by a passage to the chamber of the King.

Miomandre, meanwhile, was attacked like Varicourt and du Repaire. Knocked down from behind with the butt of a musket, he would have been despatched but for the scramble of the Galley men to rob his body of his watch, and by the diversion of the rage of the crowd against his companions shut in the Great Hall.

While Ste Marie lay insensible, those in the Great Hall were actively piling up benches against the door and removing the stacks of arms to the Oeil de Boeuf, which adjoined it, and where they proposed to make their next stand in the way to the apartments of the King. The Count of Guiche and the Prince of Luxembourg worked like the rest, and just as the door crashed through the last of the weapons were brought into the Oeil de Boeuf and its entrance closed. The Hall of the Courtiers seemed to receive the unusual invasion with the inperturbability of a courtier. One scene of bustling life appeared to suit it as well as another, even though death were so near to follow. The little reserve were drawn up in order, determined to fight it out there together.

And now a long, low sound was heard in the distance. It approached, and as it grew the shouts of rage in the Great Hall ceased, and a roar of scuttling feet was heard. Lafayette's National Guard were approaching, and as the serried lines, advancing at the double, reached the Court of Marble, their drum-beats suddenly burst into a thunderous roll, and the Court, the staircase, and the halls were cleared of the cowardly rabble.

Such was the glorious defence of the Bodyguard. And so the Queen was saved.

The Queen was saved; the King was saved; the household was saved—at least for the present—but the monarchy was lost.

His Majesty left Versailles at one o'clock. The Queen, the Dauphin, Madame Royale, Monsieur, Madame Elizabeth, the King's sister and Madame de Tourzel, governess of the children of France, were in his Majesty's carriage.

A hundred deputies of the Assembly in their carriages came next. The advance guard, which was formed of a detachment of the brigands, set out two hours earlier. In front of them Hache and Motte danced in triumph, carrying the pallid heads of Des Huttes and de Varicourt aloft on their pikes.

They stopped a moment at Sevres in front of the shop of an unfortunate hairdresser. They caught hold of the latter and forced him to dress the gory heads; a task which made the poor man a hopeless maniac the same evening.

The bulk of the Paris National Guard followed them closely. The King's carriage was preceded by Wife Gougeon and the fishwomen and a rabble of prostitutes, the vile refuse of their sex, all raving with fury and wine.

Several rode astride upon cannon, boasting in the most horrible songs of the crimes they had committed themselves or seen others commit. Those who were nearest the carriage sang ballads, the allusions in which, by means of their gestures, they applied to the Queen. In the paroxysms of their drunken merriment these women stopped passengers, and pointing to the carriage, howled in their ears, "Cheer up, friends, we shall no longer be in want of bread; we bring the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy."

They pointed to waggons which followed, full of corn and flour, which had been brought into Versailles, and formed a train, escorted by Grenadiers and surrounded by women and bullies, some armed with pikes and some carrying long branches of poplar. This favourite part of the cortege looked at some distance like a moving grove, amidst which shone pike-heads and gun-barrels. Above and in front of the motley procession which accompanied them, mounted high on one of the waggons, rode Death himself, so the spectators thought, grinning, triumphing, and directing the whole, in the shape of the skull-like countenance of the Admiral of the Galley-on-Land.

Behind his Majesty's carriage were the remnant of the Bodyguard, some on foot and some on horseback, most of them uncovered, all unarmed, and worn out with hunger and fatigue. The Dragoons, the Flanders regiment, the Hundred Swiss and the National Guards, preceded, accompanied, or followed the file of carriages.

Lecour, weak with the night's anxiety and the frightful disappointment of the day, had scarcely strength to drag himself along between two Grenadiers, who from time to time supported him, and one of whose great hairy caps he wore as a token of fraternity. All at once hell seemed to have risen about him. He heard a united yell from many savage throats, and saw a ring of red-capped brutes lunging and striking at himself, and a little woman-fiend sprang at his breast and buried something sharp in it.

The last thing of which he was conscious was the satanic revengefulness of her eyes.



CHAPTER XLVIII

SISTERS DEATH AND TRUTH

At a second-story window, in an unpretentious part of the Rue St. Honore—known just then as the Rue Honore, for the saints had been abolished, together with the terrestrial aristocracy—a young woman was sitting one late July afternoon employed in sewing. She was pale, thin, and poorly clad. Her fingers were very nervous as she hurried on with her work.

For three years the surges of the Revolutionary deluge had succeeded one another with ever-increasing rapidity, and at last threatened to swallow the entire inhabitants of the city. "The generation which saw the monarchical regime will always regret it," Robespierre was crying, "therefore every individual who was more than fifteen years old in 1789 should have his throat cut." "Away with the nobles!" was shouting another vicious leader, "and if there are any good ones so much the worse for them. Let the guillotine work incessantly through the whole Republic. France has nineteen millions too many inhabitants, she will have enough with five." "Milk is the nourishment of infants," announced another; "blood is that of the children of liberty."

The new doctrine was not merely being shouted; it was being carried into practice as fast as the executioner could work, and sometimes in a single afternoon the life-stream of two hundred hearts gushed out through two hundred severed necks on the Place de la Revolution. The King, and at last the Queen, were among the slaughtered. None knew but that his or her turn, or that of his dearest ones might come next. A too respectable dress, a thoughtless expression, the malice of an extortionate workman, or the offending of a servant, meant death. Even the wickedest were betrayed by their associates to the Goddess of Blood, and citizens, as they hurried along the deserted and filthy streets, looked at each other with suspicious eyes. On the throne of France's ancient sovereigns sat a shadowy monarch from hell, and all recognised his name and reign—The Reign of Terror.

In the midst of that thunder-fraught atmosphere sat this poor girl, mechanically glancing down the street from time to time at the silent houses, each with the legal paper affixed stating the names of the inmates, for the information of the revolutionary committees.

Her bearing, though humble, announced her as one of the hated class, and by scrutinising her thin features we see that she is "the Citizeness Montmorency, heretofore Baroness."

She was absorbed in thought. Recollections, one by one, of the changes which had made her an old woman in experience at the age when most maidens become brides, were crossing her mind. She recalled the alarming news brought to the Hotel de Noailles of the march of the viragoes on Versailles, and with that news her suspense for the safety of Germain; the entry of General Lafayette (who was married to a Noailles) into the hotel towards morning, smilingly assuring the family that all was well; her agony upon word of the attack on the royal apartments; the deadly illness of Germain at the Hotel-Dieu Hospital, whither some National Guards had taken him; the pauper bed and gown in which the Sisters of the Hospital kept him hidden from the roused populace who searched the wards for him; her own assumption of the humble dress of a servitor to nurse him; his pretended death and burial by substitute; his long delirium, her joy at his return to life; his gratitude and convalescence; the forced dispersal of the Sisters, and with it her removal of her charge to the half-deserted Hotel de Poix; the mob sacking mansion after mansion around them and their inexplicable exemption; an anonymous warning at length to flee, and the subterfuges of Dominique to cover their removal to the present house.

She thought also of the faithfulness of Germain to the King throughout his misfortunes, and how in order to be ready for service in case of a royalist opportunity, he had refused even her own entreaties to flee.

And sewing on and looking with habitual apprehension down the street, she thought of the blanks in the old circle—sadly, but without tears, for she had grown beyond tears over memories, so often had she been called to shed them for events.

With sorrowful recollection she saw again her good friend, Helene de Merecourt, and her own sister Jeanne, disappear out of life.

There was that terrible day when the King was beheaded, and that other when the Queen followed him; Bellecour, d'Amoreau, the Canoness, Vaudreuil, the Guiches, the Polignacs, were in exile. Others were concealed, scattered, outlawed, some perhaps included in the massacres; some perhaps lost among the immense number crowded into the seventy prisons of the City. When would her turn arrive? When Germain's?

A distant sound made her lips part in alarm. It was the too well-known surging murmur of a mob approaching. She hastily rose and closed the window. The Rue Honore was one of the highways particularly exposed to persecution, for its chief portion was lined with mansions where dwelt many of the "aristocrats." The great porte cochere and street wall of one were in full view of her window, coated with insulting placards and painted in huge letters, "NATIONAL PROPERTY—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." How far the property had become national may be inferred from the fact that the patriot commissioner who took its chattels into his charge, and whose name was signed with a mark at the bottom of the placard, was—Gougeon.

In this quiet part of the street, however, the smaller houses usually passed unscathed, and the neighbourhood had the advantage of its residents not being so prying as in quarters still poorer. So that by aid of some bribery of patriots of the section, discreetly done by Dominique, their slender stores of money had thus far seemed to suffice to obtain them immunity. We say seemed to suffice, because there was something very remarkable, after all, in the escape of a Montmorency, and particularly one so intimate with the obnoxious Marechale de Noailles.

The mob of women and red-capped men swarmed up the street, led by a drum, and singing "Ca ira"—

"Ah, on it goes, and on it goes, and on it goes!— The aristocrats to the lantern! Ah, on it goes, and on it goes, and on it goes!— The aristocrats, we'll hang them."

In front of the confiscated hotel the Sans-culottes stopped, and, joining hands in a circle, whirled around in the wild Revolutionary dance, "the Carmagnole," singing the words—

"Madame Veto had pledged her word, Madame Veto had pledged her word To put all Paris to the sword, To put all Paris to the sword, But we all missed our biers Thanks to our canoneers. Dance, dance the Carmagnole, Hurrah for the sound, Hurrah for the sound, Dance, dance the Carmagnole, Hurrah for the sound of the cannon!"

She watched the dancers, involuntarily fascinated. All at once an object tapped against the window, and she noticed many eyes turned up to her in malicious amusement. The object was pushed up to her on a long pole and again tapped on the window; she dropped her sewing and sprang back with a scream. It was a human hand. A shout of coarse laughter met her ears, and the hand was withdrawn. She sank back in her chair and burst into tears.

"Wretches!" cried a woman, darting forward from behind her and shaking a fist at the window.

"Oh, be careful," Cyrene gasped, pulling back the arm. "Have they seen you?"

"I fear so," was the answer, as dismayed as her question; and a number of blows and thrusts sounded against the door below. But it was only a momentary diversion; the crowd had work cut out for it somewhere else and the drum drew them onwards.

"Oh, Germain," she said hysterically, "why do you risk your life so?"

"Because it is worthless," replied the apparent woman, pulling off his hood and throwing aside the rest of his disguise. But I am a fool to endanger you that way. Oh my darling, you who saved my life, is it not rather to comfort you at times like this that I live?" and he knelt and kissed her hand.

"Dearest," she answered softly, "you make my life happy in the very midst of horrors."

"I am unworthy of your love," he returned mournfully, rising to his feet.

"You say that too often; but have not the old reasons lost their force? Even here we could make a home. Let us defer our marriage no longer."

"We cannot marry," he said slowly.

She thought he spoke of the prohibition of Christian rites by the law, and said—"But Dominique knows of a priest, who is hidden in a cellar at his cousin's."

He shook his head and she read a soul of infinite sorrow in his eyes as they rested on her face.

"It is the thought of his own death," was the interpretation that flashed upon her.

A rap was heard.

"Come in, Dominique," said he.

The list of inmates affixed to the front of the house would have explained Germain's disguise. It read—

"The Citizen Dominique Levesque, boarding-house keeper.

"The Citizeness Marie Levesque, his wife.

"The Citizeness Montmorency, sempstress."

"Citizeness Levesque" was sometimes observed about the house by the neighbours, but the family, like many others, cultivated no intercourse. Wearing the garb only whenever absolutely necessary, he took part each day in whatever work was obtained to support the household, and at night went out to keep track of what was happening.

At the time of the guillotining of the Queen, he was restrained with difficulty from throwing his life away in an insane rush upon the murderers.

"My Lady Baroness," Dominique said, clinging to all the old delicate form of his respect—for the faithful servitor was as chivalrous as any knight—"I regret to report that there is a new law compelling everybody to take out cards of civism, as they call them, at the Hotel de Ville. During the trouble at our door a few moments ago, some of the Sans-culottes threatened to return. I consider it absolutely necessary that Madame and I should go at once and obtain these credentials."

"Is there no way of getting them without Madame? It looks to me dangerous," Lecour said.

"The demand must be made in person, Monsieur le Chevalier. I have thought that question over very carefully."

"If is the most dangerous thing yet."

"I do not conceal the risk, Monsieur."

"Dear Dominique," Cyrene put in firmly, "I am ready to do all you say."

"Yes, our more than parent," Lecour added in tears, "she is ready to trust her life in your hands," and going over to Dominique he put his arm upon his shoulder and kissed him.

The old man's lip trembled and he withdrew, and at the same time Cyrene also left the chamber to prepare for the ordeal.

Then did Germain fully realise the sharpness of dread. She whom he loved was in the direst peril. He saw the gulf which had swallowed so many others yawning for her life, and he trembled as he had never trembled before. It must be said for him that he had always valued his own life little and had been willing to risk it for another on more occasions than one. It was when not he but his heart's beloved was in such danger that his eyes were opened to the greatness of the fact of death. Moreover he felt that he was helpless to lessen the peril. For him to accompany her to the Hotel de Ville was to make her fate absolutely certain. That charge must be left to Dominique, and—God!

God! He had not dared to think of God for years; yet now the Divine Face appeared through the dissolving vision of things mortal, and he suddenly saw it looming dim and awful as the one changeless Reality.

Her step sounded returning and he composed himself. Both tried to be brave. Both were thinking of the other's happiness.

"Have no anxieties, my dear one," she exclaimed, coming close to him, her eyes moistened and voice trembling slightly, "I have our good Dominique to take care of me, and we shall soon return."

"I do not doubt it," he replied as cheerily as he was able, bending and gently kissing her forehead. "Prudence and Courage!—all shall go rightly."

But at the touch of his lips she started, threw her arms around his neck and passionately drew him to her.

"And what, my beloved, if it should not go rightly?—what for you to be left behind?"

"Darling, darling, do not say it," he cried, fervently returning her embraces. "All must and will go rightly. We cannot live without each other. Trust in Providence."

Ah, what those words meant for him!

"I do," she murmured, "but would that Dominique's priest were here. I long for the eternal union of our souls."

He pressed her to his breast in great emotion, then loosed his arms and stood looking sorrowfully at her again, as for the last time.

"Au revoir," she whispered, her eyes intensely searching into his.

"Au revoir, ma chere," he answered, mastering his voice with all his strength.

Then she and Dominique left the house.



CHAPTER XLIX

CIVIC VIRTUE

Dominique and the citizeness proceeded as unobtrusively as they could along the Rue Honore. He hurried her past the Rue Florentin, down which he knew, without looking, was to be seen the tall machine of execution on the Place de la Revolution.

At first they passed few people, but on approaching the centre of the City they saw numbers in front of the cafes and even going to the theatre. Flashy carriages of thievish men who had enriched themselves under the new conditions, rolled frequently by. The basis of their power, the squalid element with jealous, insolent eyes, also increased on the pavements.

At the Rue de la Monnaie they turned towards the Quays. Just as they were turning, a young woman, whose head was covered with a shawl, glided from a gateway and addressed them.

They both started suspiciously, but the poor creature proved to be only seeking charity, and Cyrene, struck by a certain desperation in her tone, turned to give her a couple of sous. In passing the coins their eyes met, and the mendicant started.

"Great God! Madame Baroness, you do not know me?"

The voice, though altered in quality, recalled other times. Her features became recognisable, and the identity of their owner came over Cyrene.

"Mademoiselle de Richeval!" she gasped.

The sprightly companion of princesses was begging her bread. Her wit and beauty had disappeared, the once bright eyes were sharp, the once blooming cheeks were wrinkled and shrunk.

"Ladies, remember the spies," said Dominique.

"Go to our house, my dear," Cyrene whispered hastily. "It is No. 409, Rue Honore, you will get supper there, and await us."

"409, Rue Honore," the other repeated, and hastened to the promised food.

Continuing, the two reached the Hotel de Ville at seven o'clock. Though early, the spacious building was lighted from attic to basement, and slipping in through a swarm of Sans-culottes who surrounded the doorsteps, they entered the great hall. As they were going in the "Marseillaise" began to be pounded, and the entry, from the opposite direction, of persons of much more importance than they, attracted the eyes of the men and women who smoked and knitted round the hall. The incomers were the President and heads of the Commune of Paris, each arrayed in his tricolor carmagnole, red bonnet, and great sabre.

The President was the Admiral. His glittering eyes swept the chamber, and singling out Cyrene as by premeditation, rested upon her face. He was unknown to her, but at his smile she shuddered.

These exalted personages—robbers, murderers, tavern-keepers, kettle-menders—sat down on their raised tribune, while Cyrene and Dominique were pushed by the guards into some rows of benches in front of but not facing them. The individuals on these benches were as yet few, and Cyrene looked apprehensively around the place, while Dominique took mental notes. They saw, forming the sides of the hall, two amphitheatres filled with Jacobin women knitting, patching trousers or waistcoats, and watching the benches of supplicants for the cards of civism, and made remarks to one another aloud.

"That one's not Sans-culotte enough for me," called out a young woman in a red bonnet, and crossing over with the stride of a Grenadier to Cyrene, stood before her, arms akimbo, and cried shrilly, "Saint Guillotine for your patron, my delicate Ma'mselle."

The use of the prescribed address "ma'mselle" was evidently regarded as a witticism, for shouts of laughter filled the place.

Just then the President rang his bell, and as he did so he looked at Cyrene significantly. Shrink as she might from his leer, she could not but feel grateful, for he had evidently rung purposely.

A secretary began the minutes, which consisted of resolutions of Jacobin joy at the capture of a once idolised patriot who had lately been denounced by Robespierre for counselling mercy to prisoners.

The name of Robespierre excited enthusiastic applause.

A set of benches facing those of the applicants had stood thus far empty. They were now filled by the entry of a body of representatives furnished by certain of the forty-eight sections of the City, whereupon the "Marseillaise" was again beat, and several of the councillors lit their pipes.

The principal sections represented were those of the Pikes and the Fish-market.

Some one called for "Ca ira." It was succeeded by a harangue of the Admiral against the captured ex-patriot. Cyrene followed with horror every word of his oratory, every movement of his declamation, the air of pride with which he played upon the passions of the Sans-culottes, and the wicked sweep of the principles he announced.

"That all mankind deserve massacre," he cried, smiling, "is the philosophic general rule; the sole exceptions are the true patriots. By title of liberty, the possessions of all belong to them alone. And how can we know the true patriot? By his red cap and his red hand."

Finally the long suspense of the applicants was brought to a close; the secretary called the first on the list.

"Citizeness Montmorency."

At the once great name a silence fell over the place.

Then a murmur ran through the benches of the Jacobin women, while Cyrene summoned her courage. The murmur was not long in taking shape.

"The Montmorencys are a brood of monsters," energetically called the young Jacobiness, rising in her place.

"The aristocrat to the guillotine!" shouted a drunken man.

"The guillotine!"

"Yes, yes—to La Force immediately!"

These and similar cries resounded. They fell upon Cyrene's ears like thunders of hostile artillery in a battle. Dominique sat quite still. His mistress rose. Now that the instant of danger had actually come she felt an inconquerable courage well up in her, which, as she stood with brilliant eye and glowing cheek, made her very beautiful. This was not in her favour with the envious knitters; but while they commented in frightful language on her gentle build, the secretary said—"Are you the person?"

"I am," she answered clearly.

"Are you not," he continued glancing at the audience for approbation, "the late aristocrat Baroness of that name?"

"I am," she replied, in a tone still clearer and more fearless.

The President's face gleamed with admiration. He rang his bell sharply and the clamours subsided. His glittering eyes devoured her features, while he said—

"Does anybody know the citizeness and answer for her civism?" He hurriedly added, "Adjourned; call the next."

Dominique caught her by the arm to make their exit, for though he could not assign a reason for the Admiral's device of favour, he was ready to take advantage of it.

As they started, one of the section members sprang up and exclaimed—

"I answer for the citizeness."

He was a man of less than thirty, and of open, enthusiastic expression, and wore the uniform of a National Guard.

"You, citizen la Tour?" the Admiral exclaimed.

Cyrene eyed the member in grateful but intense wonder. She had never to her knowledge seen him before.

"Yes, citizen President," he replied earnestly, "I answer for the citizeness because she saved my life."

The crowd hushed by a common impulse.

"You all know me, brothers," he cried, "my record for the Revolution, my passion for liberty—Liberty, Liberty, Liberty! It has been my dream under the stars, my labour under the sun, my love and my desire. I was, as all know, a patriot proscribed and condemned to death before the Revolution began. I was of the first at the hanging of Foulon, at the sacking of Reveillon, and at the walls of the Bastille. I was wounded in the stand against the Dragoons of Lambesc, and all know my scars in the battles of the North. I name these things only to prove the claim of this woman to civic rights. By her pity she saved my life in the old days, at the last moment before my breaking on the wheel. Imagine to yourselves that moment. Ask how I can feel other than gratitude and devotion to my benefactress. In the evil days of the aristocrats she was a friend of the poor. I present her now to you when it is in our power to confer liberty upon her who set at liberty, life upon her who saved life. I, the child of the Revolution, pray this as my right; she claims it also for herself as a heroine of civic virtue. Give your suffrages."

"Vive la Tour! vive the citizeness!" resounded in shouts through the hall. Once more the Admiral rang his bell, and silenced followed.

"Yes, citizeness," he said, addressing her, "your courage is French courage, your virtue French virtue, and the good heart of the nation sees in you a daughter of the people. Incarnating the spirit of the race, be welcome at the tables of fraternity, and accept the homage of all hearts."

At a motion of his hand the secretary hastily filled in her certificate, and Dominique, without waiting for his own, hurried her away. Even as they left they heard Wife Gougeon scream—

"Death to the aristocrat!"

They hastened across the Place de Greve, but had not yet reached the corner of the street beyond, when in the dusk Cyrene heard the sound of rushing wheels, felt herself choked by a gag from behind, and was pushed helpless by rough hands into a coach and driven away. Behind her she heard a sound of scuffle and the voice of Dominique cry aloud in anguish—

"They have finished me!"

"Be quiet, my lady," spoke the voice of Abbe Jude.

She knew no more till she woke in darkness.



CHAPTER L

JUDGMENT DAY

Germain, left alone in the house, bolted the door, returned with trembling limbs to the room above and threw himself down in his chair blanched and nerveless. They who have experienced the minutes when a well-loved one hangs between life and death can alone know what he suffered. It was now that the fleeting poverty of the ideals he had been following became visible. The elegance, the pride, the historic glamour, the fine breeding of the Old Regime, by which he had been fascinated, had they not fallen to pieces like a flower whose petals are scattered in the tempest? Even the burning hope of his heart, the dream of a life of earthly bliss with his love, was showing its insecurity and dropping asunder. His ship was sinking in the ocean of Eternity. How futile his intrigue, how mean his deceptions, how insufficient his excuses. The Everlasting Presence gazed through them, and in its all-illumining blaze they fell and sank away. He saw that that which underlies life and death and all that is, is a living Conscience, to which all must perforce conform. Pride, deception, selfishness, uncontrol of passion, the taking of that which was not his, and the injuring of honourable men—these excrescences he saw upon his soul, and that without their surgery it would never be divine. He remembered the prophetic warning of his father that "Eternal Justice calls us to exact account"; and the pertinacity of Retribution in the matter of the Golden Dog. He saw that the justice of this life and the next are one, and are absolutely complete in their demands. One great conclusion came to him with overwhelming force; he saw that it was the plan of Heaven that no man must profit by any fruit of his wrong. He now himself must meet that justice and make that retribution.

At length, leaving the room, he dragged himself up the stair leading to his own chamber, a cramped place in the flat above, bearing small resemblance to his luxurious apartments of former days; yet around it were hung the de Lincy family portraits; his sword of the Bodyguard lay on the mantel; and in the space behind the door were the old Chevalier's iron-bound muniment-chest and his own little portmanteau gilded with his arms.

With fevered face and icy hands he opened the latter and sought out the packet of his proofs of noblesse. Then turning to the fireplace beneath the mantel, he threw the papers one by one into it—his falsified birth-certificate, his father's altered marriage-contract, the letter of the gentlemen of Montreal, the apology of Councillor de Lery, the will of the Chevalier de Lincy and the attestation of the Genealogist of France. He took a flint and steel from the mantel and quickly struck spark after spark into them until they sprang into flames. Then he added his great genealogical tree of the de Lincys, whose branches withered and quivered, like his heart, as the fire attacked the broad folds of the parchment. Packet after packet the precious archives of the Lecours de Lincy went upon the pile until he had emptied the muniment-chest; the fire raged and reddened into a solid mass, and they were irrevocably gone. Next he took up de Bailleul's will—sorrowfully and hesitatingly, for it was his title to Eaux Tranquilles—but the following instant he threw it also on the flames. Then he deliberately cast in his Grand Cross of St. Louis and the insignia of the Order of the Holy Ghost. His Diamond Armorial followed, he tore his seal, cut with the pretended coat-of-arms, from his watch-chain, broke up with his foot his little portmanteau, and tearing down the de Lincy portraits one by one watched all blaze up and consume together. At last, on the top of the heap, he mournfully laid his sword of the Bodyguard and saw its golden handle and delicate blade begin to glow and discolour.

"Disappear, old dreams;" he murmured, "Eternal Justice visit me for all! But afflict not her; spare thine angel for her own sake. Oh, spare her."

One packet remained, which he had intentionally not destroyed. When the fire settled down a little he took a strong paper and cord, wrapped and sealed it, and addressed it for mailing as follows—

RECORD OF PROOFS AGAINST G. LECOUR, THE PROPERTY OF MONSIEUR LOUIS R. C. DE LERY, Late Bodyguard of the King of France, AT QUEBEC IN CANADA.

Humbly he descended the stair once more, and placing the package on the table of the sitting-room, sank again feverishly into his chair, prepared to confess all should Cyrene safely return.

A knocking sounded in the lower part of the house. He went to the door; the wicket showed a beggar woman, but on Mademoiselle Richeval mentioning her name he recognised her and let her in. His mind was so absorbed that he felt no surprise. As food was what she wanted he set before her everything in their little larder; and while she was eating like one famished he forgot her presence completely. The two once so sociable persons were for a while dumb to each other.

At length, however, having satisfied her ravenous hunger, she commenced to speak of the changes which the Revolution had brought to them and to wonder at his strange want of interest, when the noise of a mob crowding around the door was heard.

Lecour saw what might happen.

"Fly, Mademoiselle," he said; "in the courtyard there is a door on the left, take it and pass into the next house where are good people who will not abandon you. I must stay here."

He then went to the door at which pikes and gun-stocks were beating.

"Citizens, I am the only person in the house," said he, at an opening they had broken in one of the panels. "What do you wish?"

For answer several pikes were thrown in; he stepped back beyond their reach, calmly fronting the fierce faces.

"Tell me what you want. I am ready to do your will."

There was a short period of indecision outside. A muscular man in a carmagnole swinging a formidable axe pushed forward and the others fell back at his rough order.

"I arrest you, citizen Repentigny," said Hache, for it was he. "We mates of Bec and Caron that you quartered have had it in for you for a long time. I am a commissioner now, and they call this my domiciliary visit. If you will come, I will see, on the faith of a brigand, that you get to prison safely; if not, I will see that you don't. Do you come?"

Germain calculated the seconds he had been able to save for Mademoiselle Richeval. They were ample.

He opened the door and gave himself up.



CHAPTER LI

LOVE ENDURETH ALL THINGS

Cyrene, when she found herself in darkness, had a confused idea that she was waking from a dream and lying in her bed at the house in the Rue Honore. Under that impression she drew a breath of relief. A curse from a woman's voice somewhere near by made her realise the truth; the cry of Dominique, "They have finished me!" and the circumstances of his disappearance from her side returned vividly, and her heart sickened. But misery is like a thermometer; after reaching a particular degree it can fall but slightly lower. The death of Dominique only benumbed her brain. Her next impression was that this place in which she lay must be a dungeon, and as her eyes could make out nothing whatever in the darkness she concluded that the woman she heard must be a prisoner in an adjoining cell.

In a short time a stealthy step approached. It stopped, a wooden door swung back, and a band of greyish light showed a low room of rough beams without a window. At the door Wife Gougeon peered in, and behind her was the cheerless perspective of the shop, additionally cheerless in the grey of early morning.

"Well, wench, how do you like being a Sans-culotte? You slept too soft in the Old Regime."

Cyrene had not noticed how she had been sleeping; she now saw that her bed was a pile of straw on a box.

"Get up, you sow, and sweep my floor!" exclaimed the ragman's wife. "Get up!"

Cyrene's first instinct was to lie still in tacit disdain. The recollection of Germain, however, crossed her mind. Rather submit to anything than exasperate his enemies; so she rose, with an effort. Her limbs felt heavy.

"Out now, take this broom, you sot, and sweep the floor."

Cyrene came out and proceeded to brush aside the dust between the piles of metal. Wife Gougeon sat back on a block of wood and laughed, in immense enjoyment.

"So you were a baroness once, one of the heretofores? Well, I like baronesses to do my dirty work for me and Montmorencys for my sweeps. You never thought the people would arrive at this, eh? You thought, you aristocrats, that you could have the fine houses and we could do all the scullery work. How do you like it? Oh, I have dirtier work than that that I will make you do. This is only the commencement. Sweep that board clean, you pig!"

The woman fumed at Cyrene's silence.

"Have you no tongue, animal? Why don't you answer when I speak? I'll teach you," and, her eyes glittering, she picked up an iron bolt and threw it at her victim. It struck Cyrene's arm, bruising it severely. The girl winced, but continued wielding the broom as meekly as before.

"Ah," went on Wife Gougeon, "do you know what I will do with you? I will have your head sliced off. What nice necks you 'heretofores' have. I've seen many a one chopped through."

"Hush, hush, dear citizeness Gougeon," said the Abbe, appearing near by. "I brought the citizeness to you for protection; I wish to speak to her apart—say in the chamber there."

Cyrene looked at him in sorrowful relief.

"Citizeness," he said, making the greatest effort at ingratiation, "I have a few things to speak to you. You will excuse us, citizeness Gougeon?"

"Republicans do not excuse and excuse like you 'heretofores.' If it were not for the Galley, I would slice your neck to-morrow too. Go, and be quick about it, Blacklegs, while I wait to see her sweep for me again."

Cyrene staggered after him in her weakness into her chamber again, and, while she sat upon her pallet, he shut the door, took a candle down from a beam, and lit it.

"Do not mind her," he said while doing so. "She is a Jacobiness."

She looked at him as closely as her fevered sight permitted, and saw that he was shivering with excitement and his long face and downcast eyes contorting.

She sat speechless, unable to comprehend him.

"Madame Baroness," said he, "have you never wondered at your long escape from the perils of these times? When the mansions of others were burned, your house has been free from molestation; when their goods were appropriated by the nation, yours have been left intact; when all aristocrats have been sent to the guillotine, you have slept in safety. Have you not thought this strange?"

The questioning seemed to be lost upon her, except for a nod.

"Did you never," he went on, "suspect that some power was protecting you, and ask by whose influence you were thus surrounded and your peace secured? Did you never recognise a faithfulness which relaxed at no moment, a care which was unlimited—in a word, a secret friend at the source of affairs? Madame, I was that friend."

He stopped and looked at her, his increasing excitement overcoming his stealth. She was moved, and tears brimmed in her eyes.

"I am grateful, Abbe Jude; let me say it from my heart. You have been wronged by us. We believed you were different."

At the tribute his eager look intensified itself into a piercing gaze which made her feel dread of him.

"Yes, I was that secret friend," he cried. "It was I who protected you at the sections, I struck your name from the lists of proscriptions, I diverted the marches of the patriots from your portals. Do you think all this would be done for three years without true faithfulness?"