sword.
'To the stairs, Messieurs!' he cried 'To the stairs!'
And to the stairs they went. The extremity was now too great for argument. They dared not so much as look at their women-folk, lest they should be unmanned by the sight of those huddled creatures—their finery but serving to render them the more pitiable in their sickly affright. In a body the whole thirty of them swept from the room, and with Bellecour at their head and Ombreval somewhere in the rearmost rank, they made their way to the great staircase.
Here, armed with their swords and a brace of pistols to each man, whilst for a few the Marquis had even found carbines, they waited, with faces set and lips tight pressed for the end that they knew approached.
Nor was their waiting long. As the peasants had blown down the gates so now did they blow down the doors of the Chateau, and in the explosion three of Bellecour's servants—who had stood too near—were killed. Over the threshold they swarmed into the dark gulf of the great hall to the foot of the staircase. But here they were at a disadvantage. The light of the burning stables, shining through the open doorway, revealed them to the defenders, whilst they themselves looked up into the dark. There was a sudden cracking of pistols and a few louder reports from the guns, and the mob fled, screaming, back into the yard, leaving a score of dead and wounded on the polished floor of the hall.
Old M. des Cadoux laughed in the dark, as with his sword hanging from his wrist he tapped his snuff- box.
'Ma foi,' said he to his neighbour, 'they are discovering that it is not to be the triumphal march they had expected. A pinch of rappee, Stanislas?'
But the respite was brief. In a moment they saw the glare increase at the door, and presently a half-dozen of the rabble entered with torches, followed by some scores of their comrades. They paused at sight of that company ranged upon the stairs, as well they might, for a more incongruous sight could scarcely be imagined. Across the bodies of the slain, and revealed by the lifting powder smoke, stood that little band of thirty men, a blaze of gay colours, a sheen of silken hose, their wigs curled and powdered, their costly ruffles scintillant with jewels; calm, and supercilious, mocking to a man. There was a momentary gasp of awe, and then the spell was broken by the aristocrats themselves. A pistol spoke, and a volley followed. In the hall some stumbled forward, some hurtled backward, and some sank down in nerveless heaps. But those that remained did not again retreat. Reinforced by others, that crowded in behind, they charged boldly up the stairs, headed by a ragged, red capped giant named Souvestre—a man whom the Marquis had once irreparably wronged.
The sight of him was a revelation to Bellecour. This assault was Souvestre's work; the fellow had been inciting the people of Bellecour for the past twelve months, long indeed before the outbreak of the revolution proper, and at last he had roused them to the pitch of accompanying him upon his errand of tardy but relentless vengeance.
With a growl the Marquis raised his pistol. But Souvestre saw the movement, and with a laugh he did the like. Simultaneously there were two reports, and Bellecour's arm fell shattered to his side. Souvestre continued to advance, his smoking pistol in one hand and brandishing a huge sabre with the other. Behind him, howling and roaring like the beasts of prey they were become, surged the tenantry of Bellecour to pay the long-standing debt of hate to their seigneur.
'Here,' said Des Cadoux, with a grimace, 'endeth the chapter of our lives. I wonder, do they keep rappee in heaven?' He snapped down the lid of his gold snuffbox—that faithful companion and consoler of so many years— and cast it viciously at the head of one of the oncoming peasants. Then tossing back the lace from his wrist he brought his sword into guard and turned aside a murderous stroke which an assailant aimed at him.
'Animal,' he snapped viciously, as he set to work, 'it is the first time that my chaste blade has been crossed with such dirty steel as yours. I hope, for the honour of Cadoux, that it may not be quite the last.'
Up, and ever up, swept that murderous tide. The half of those that had held the stairs lay weltering upon them as if in a last attempt to barricade with their bodies what they could no longer defend with their hands. A bare half-score remained standing, and amongst these that gallant old Cadoux, who had by now accounted for a half-dozen sans-culottes, and was hence in high glee, a man rejuvenesced. His sallies grew livelier and more barbed as the death-tide rose higher about him. His one regret was that he had been so hasty in casting his snuff box from him, for he was missing its familiar stimulus. At his side the Marquis was fighting desperately, fencing with his left arm, and in the hot excitement seeming oblivious of the pain his broken right must be occasioning.
'It is ended, old friend,' he groaned at last, to Des Cadoux. 'I am losing strength, and I shall be done for in a moment. The women,' he almost sobbed, 'mon Dieu, the women!'
Des Cadoux felt his old eyes grow moist, and the odd, fierce mirth that seemed to have hitherto infected him went out like a candle that is snuffed. But suddenly before he could make any answer, a new and unexpected sound, which dominated the din of combat, and seemed to cause all—assailants and defenders alike—to pause that they might listen, was wafted to their ears.
It was the roll of the drum. Not the mere thudding that had beaten the step for the mob, but the steady and vigorous tattoo of many sticks upon many skins.
'What is it? Who comes?' were the questions that men asked one another, as both aristocrats and sansculottes paused in their bloody labours. It was close at hand. So close at hand that they could discern the tramp of marching feet. In the infernal din of that fight upon the stairs they had not caught the sound of this approach until now that the new-comers—whoever they might be—were at the very gates of Bellecour.
From the mob in the yard there came a sudden outcry. Men sprang to the door of the Chateau and shouted to those within.
'Aux Armes,' was the cry. 'A nous, d nous!'
And in response to it the assailants turned tail, and dashed down the stairs, overleaping the dead bodies that were piled upon them, and many a man slipping in that shambles and ending the descent on his back. Out into the courtyard they swept: leaving that handful of gentlemen, their fine clothes disordered, splashed with blood and grimed with powder, to question one another touching this portent, this miracle that seemed wrought by Heaven for their salvation.
CHAPTER VI. THE CITIZEN COMMISSIONER
It was, after all, no miracle, unless the very timely arrival upon the scene of a regiment of the line might be accepted in the light of Heaven-directed. As a matter of fact, a rumour of the assault that was to be made that night upon the Chateau de Bellecour had travelled as far as Amiens, and there, that evening, it had reached the ears of a certain Commissioner of the National Convention, who was accompanying this regiment to the army of Dumouriez, then in Belgium.
Now it so happened that this Commissioner had meditated making a descent upon the Chateau on his own account, and he was not minded that any peasantry should forestall or baulk him in the business which he proposed to carry out there. Accordingly, he issued certain orders to the commandant, from which it resulted that a company, two hundred strong, was immediately despatched to Bellecour, to either defend or rescue it from the mob, and thereafter to await the arrival of the Commissioner himself.
This was the company that had reached Bellecour in the eleventh hour, to claim the attention of the assailants. But the peasants, as we have seen, were by no means disposed to submit to interference, and this they signified by the menacing front they showed the military, abandoning their attack upon the Chateau until they should be clear concerning the intentions of the newcomers. Of these intentions the Captain did not leave them long in doubt. A brisk word of command brought his men into a bristling line of attack, which in itself should have proved sufficient to ensure the peasantry's respect.
'Citizens' cried the officer, stepping forward, 'in the name of the French Republic I charge you to withdraw and to leave us unhampered in the business we are here to discharge.'
'Citizen-captain,' answered the giant Souvestre, constituting himself the spokesman of his fellows, 'we demand to know by what right you interfere with honest patriots of France in the act of ridding it of some of the aristocratic vermin that yet lingers on its soil?'
