Chapter 44

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 _maître d'hôtel_ 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 Cyrène 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 château, 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 château 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 Cyrène, 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 Cyrène. 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 château. 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."

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

Dominique dropped the _rôle_ 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 Cyrène 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 Cyrène'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.

Cyrène tremblingly caught Germain's arm, excited with a new idea. "To the old château! 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. Cyrène 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 Cyrène. 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 Cyrène 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 Cyrène 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 château 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 Cyrène 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.