Part 43 (1/2)

”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 mult.i.tude 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 pa.s.sage 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 t.i.tle-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 doc.u.ments.

”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 cas.e.m.e.nt 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 ma.s.sacre, 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. Pa.s.sing 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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.