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 a.s.sailant 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--a.s.sailants 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 a.s.sailants 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 a.s.sault 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 a.s.sailants. 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, const.i.tuting 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?"
The officer stared at his interlocutor, amazed by the tone of the man as much as by the sudden growls that chorused it, but nowise intimidated by either the one or the other.
"I proclaimed my right when I issued my charge in the name of the Republic," he answered shortly.
"We are the Republic," Souvestre retorted, with a wave of the hand towards the ferocious crowd of men and women behind him. "We are the Nation--the sacred people of France. In our own name, Citizen-soldier, we charge you to withdraw and leave us undisturbed."
Here lay the basis of an argument into which, however, the Captain, being neither politician nor dialectician, was not minded to be drawn.
He shrugged his shoulders and turned to his men.
"Present arms!" was the answer he delivered, in a voice of supreme unconcern.
"Citizen-captain, this is an outrage," screamed a voice in the mob. "If blood is shed, upon your own head be it."
"Will you withdraw?" inquired the Captain coldly.
"To me, my children," cried Souvestre, brandishing his sabre, and seeking to encourage his followers. "Down with these traitors who dishonour the uniform of France! Death to the blue-coats!"
He leapt forward towards the military, and with a sudden roar his followers, a full hundred strong sprang after him to the charge.
"Fire!" commanded the Captain, and from the front line of his company fifty sheets of flame flashed from fifty carbines.
The mob paused; for a second it wavered; then before the smoke had lifted it broke, and shrieking in terror, it fled for cover, leaving the valorous Souvestre alone, to revile them for a swarm of cowardly rats.
The Captain put his hands to his sides and laughed till the tears coursed down his cheeks. Checking his mirth at last, he called to Souvestre, who was retreating in disgust and anger.
"Hi! My friend the patriot! Are you still of the same mind or will you withdraw your people?"
"We will not withdraw," answered the giant sullenly. "You dare not fire upon free citizens of the French Republic."
"Dare I not? Do you delude yourself with that, nor think that because this time I fired over your heads I dare not fire into your ranks. I give you my word that if I have to command my men to fire a second time it shall not be mere make-believe, and I also give you my word that if at the end of a minute I have not your reply and you are not moving out of this--every rogue of you shall have a very bitter knowledge of how much I dare."
Souvestre was headstrong and angry. But what can one man, however headstrong and however angry, do against two hundred, when his own followers refuse to support him. The valour of the peasants was distinctly of that quality whose better part is discretion. The thunder of that fusillade had been enough to shatter their nerve, and to Souvestre"s exhortations that they should become martyrs in the n.o.ble cause, of the people against tyranny, in whatsoever guise it came, they answered with the unanswerable logic of caution.
The end was that a very few moments later saw them in full retreat, leaving the military in sole and undisputed possession of Bellecour.
The officer"s first thought was for the blazing stables, and he at once ordered a detachment of his company to set about quenching the fire, a matter in which they succeeded after some two hours of arduous labour.
Meanwhile, leaving the main body bivouacked in the courtyard, he entered the Chateau with a score of men, and came upon the ten gentlemen still standing in the shambles that the grand staircase presented. With the Marquis de Bellecour the Captain had a brief and not over courteous interview. He informed the n.o.bleman that he was acting under the orders of a Commissioner, who had heard at Amiens, that evening, of the attack that was to be made upon Bellecour. Not unnaturally the Marquis was mistrustful of the ends which that Commissioner, whoever he might be, looked to serve by so unusual an act. Far better did it sort with the methods of the National Convention and its members to leave the butchering of aristocrats to take its course. He sought information at the Captain"s hands, but the officer was reticent to the point of curtness, and so, their anxiety but little relieved, since it might seem that they had but escaped from Scylla to be engulfed in Charbydis, the aristocrats at Bellecour spent the night in odious suspense. Those that were tending the wounded had perhaps the best of it, since thus their minds were occupied and saved the torture of speculation.
The proportion of slain was mercifully small: of twenty that had fallen it was found that but six were dead, the others being more or less severely hurt. Conspicuous among the men that remained, and perhaps the bravest of them all was old Des Cadoux. He had recovered his snuff-box, than which there seemed to be nothing of greater importance in the world, and he moved from group to group with here a jest and there a word of encouragement, as seemed best suited to those he addressed.
Of the women, Mademoiselle de Bellecour and her sharp tongued mother, showed certainly the most undaunted fronts.
Suzanne had not seen her betrothed since the fight upon the stairs. But she was told that he was unhurt, and that he was tending a cousin of his who had been severely wounded in the head.
It was an hour or so after sunrise when he sought her out, and they stood in conversation together--a very jaded pair--looking down from one of the windows upon the stalwart blue-coats that were bivouacked in the quadrangle.
Suddenly on the still morning air came the sound of hoof-beats, and as they looked they espied a man in a c.o.c.ked hat and an ample black cloak riding briskly up the avenue.
"See?" exclaimed Ombreval; "yonder at last comes the great man we are awaiting--the Commissioner of that rabble they call the National Convention. Now we shall know what fate is reserved for us."
"But what can they do?" she asked.
"It is the fashion to send people of our station to Paris," he replied, "to make a mock of us with an affair they call a trial before they murder us."
She sighed.
"Perhaps this gentleman is more merciful," was the hope she expressed.
"Merciful?" he mocked. "Ma foi, a ravenous tiger may be merciful before one of these. Had your father been wise he had ordered the few of us that remained to charge those soldiers when they entered, and to have met our end upon their bayonets. That would have been a merciful fate compared with the mercy of this so-called Commissioner is likely to extend us."
It seemed to be his way to find fault, and that warp in his character rendered him now as heroic--in words--as he had been erstwhile scornful.