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.