"Who now will guard bewildered youth
Safe from the fierce assault of hostile rage?--
Such war can Virtue wage?"
At the very moment when this order was going to be put in execution,
Madame de Fleury was sitting in the midst of the children, listening to
Babet, who was reading AEsop's fable of _The old man and his sons_.
Whilst her sister was reading, Victoire collected a number of twigs from
the garden: she had just tied them together; and was going, by Sister
Frances' desire, to let her companions try if they could break the
bundle, when the attention to the moral of the fable was interrupted by
the entrance of an old woman, whose countenance expressed the utmost
terror and haste, to tell what she had not breath to utter. To Madame de
Fleury she was a stranger; but the children immediately recollected her
to be the chestnut woman to whom Babet had some years ago restored
certain purloined chestnuts.
"Fly!" said she, the moment she had breath to speak: "Fly!--they are
coming to seize everything here--carry off what you can--make haste--make
haste!--I came through a by-street. A man was eating chestnuts at my
stall, and I saw him show one that was with him the order from Citoyen
Tracassier. They'll be here in five minutes--quick!--quick!--You, in
particular," continued she, turning to the nun, "else you'll be in
prison."
At these words, the children, who had clung round Sister Frances, loosed
their hold, exclaiming, "Go! go quick: but where? where?--we will go with
her."
"No, no!" said Madame de Fleury, "she shall come home with me--my
carriage is at the door."
"Ma belle dame!" cried the chestnut woman, "your house is the worst place
she can go to--let her come to my cellar--the poorest cellar in these
days is safer than the grandest palace."
So saying, she seized the nun with honest roughness, and hurried her
away. As soon as she was gone, the children ran different ways, each to
collect some favourite thing, which they thought they could not leave
behind. Victoire alone stood motionless beside Madame de Fleury; her
whole thoughts absorbed by the fear that her benefactress would be
imprisoned. "Oh, madame! dear, dear Madame de Fleury, don't stay! don't
stay!"
"Oh, children, never mind these things."
"Don't stay, madame, don't stay! I will stay with them--I will stay--do
you go."
The children hearing these words, and recollecting Madame de Fleury's
danger, abandoned all their little property, and instantly obeyed her
orders to go home to their parents. Victoire at last saw Madame de
Fleury safe in her carriage. The coachman drove off at a great rate; and
a few minutes afterwards Tracassier's myrmidons arrived at the school-
house. Great was their surprise when they found only the poor children's
little books, unfinished samplers, and half-hemmed handkerchiefs. They
ran into the garden to search for the nun. They were men of brutal
habits, yet as they looked at everything round them, which bespoke peace,
innocence, and childish happiness, they could not help thinking it was a
pity to destroy what could do the nation no great harm after all. They
were even glad that the nun had made her escape, since they were not
answerable for it; and they returned to their employer satisfied for once
without doing any mischief; but Citizen Tracassier was of too vindictive
a temper to suffer the objects of his hatred thus to elude his vengeance.
The next day Madame de Fleury was summoned before his tribunal and
ordered to give up the nun, against whom, as a suspected person, a decree
of the law had been obtained.
Madame de Fleury refused to betray the innocent woman; the gentle
firmness of this lady's answers to a brutal interrogatory was termed
insolence--she was pronounced a refractory aristocrat, dangerous to the
state; and an order was made out to seal up her goods, and to keep her a
prisoner in her own house.