When the grey dawn, to which so many looked forward, broke slowly over the waking city, it found on the leads of Froment's tower some pale faces; perhaps some sinking hearts. That hour, when all life lacks colour, and all things, the sky excepted, are black to the eye, tries a man's courage to the uttermost; as the cold wind that blows with it searches his body. Eyes that an hour before had sparkled over the wine--for we had sat late and drunk to the King, the Church, the Red Cockade, and M. d'Artois--grew thoughtful; men who, a little before, had shown flushed faces, shivered as they peered into the mist, and drew their cloaks more closely round them; and if the man was there, who regarded the issue of the day with perfect indifference, he was not of those near me.
Froment had preached faith, but the faith for the most part was down in the street. There, I have no doubt, were many who believed, and were ready to rush on death, or slay without pity. And there may have been one or two of these with us. But in the main, the men who looked down with me on Nîmes that morning were hardy adventurers, or local followers of Froment, or officers whose regiments had dismissed them, or--but these were few--gentlemen, like St. Alais. All brave men, and some heated with wine; but not Froment only had heard of Favras hanged, of De Launay massacred, of Provost Flesselles shot in cold blood! Others beside him could make a guess at the kind of vengeance this strange new creature, La Nation, might take, being outraged: and so, when the long-expected dawn appeared at last, and warmed the eastern clouds, and leaping across the sea of mist which filled the Rhone valley, tinged the western peaks with rosy light, and found us watching, I saw no face among all the light fell on, that was not serious, not one but had some haggard, wan, or careworn touch to mark it mortal.
Save only Froment's. He, be the reason what it might, showed as the light rose a countenance not merely resolute, but cheerful. Abandoning the solitary habit he had maintained all night, he came forward to the battlements overlooking the town, and talked and even jested, rallying the faint-hearted, and taking success for granted. I have heard his enemies say that he did this because it was his nature, because he could not help it; because his vanity raised him, not only above the ordinary passions of men, but above fear; because in the conceit of acting his part to the admiration of all, he forgot that it was more than a part, and tried all fortunes and ran all risks with as little emotion as the actor who portrays the Cid, or takes poison in the part of Mithridates.
But this seems to me to amount to no more than saying that he was not only a very vain, but a very brave man. Which I admit. No one, indeed, who saw him that morning could doubt it; or that, of a million, he was the man best fitted to command in such an emergency; resolute, undoubting, even gay, he reversed no orders, expressed no fears. When the mist rolled away--a little after four--and let the smiling plain be seen, and the city and the hills, and when from the direction of the Rhone the first harsh jangle of bells smote the ear and stilled the lark's song, he turned to his following with an air almost joyous.
"Come, gentlemen," he said gaily, and with head erect. "Let us be stirring! They must not say that we lie close and fear to show our heads abroad; or, having set others moving, are backward ourselves--like the tonguesters and dreamers of their knavish assembly, who, when they would take their King, set women in the front rank to take the danger also!Allons, Messieurs! They brought him from Versailles to Paris. We will escort him back! And to-day we take the first step!"
Enthusiasm is of all things the most contagious. A murmur of assent greeted his words; eyes that a moment before had been dull enough, grew bright. "A bas les Traîtres!" cried one. "A bas le Tricolor!" cried another.
Froment raised his hand for silence. "No, Monsieur," he said quickly. "On the contrary, we will have a tricolour of our own.Vive le Roi! Vive la Foi! Vive la Loi! Vivent les Trois!"
The conceit took. A hundred voices shouted, "Vivent les Trois!" in chorus. The words were taken up on lower roofs and at windows, and in the streets below; until they passed noisily away, after the manner of file-firing, into the distance.
Froment raised his hat gallantly. "Thank you, gentlemen," he said. "In the King's name, in his Majesty's name, I thank you. Before we have done, the Atlantic shall hear that cry, and La Manche re-echo it! And the Rhone shall release what the Seine has taken! To Nîmes and to you, all France looks this day. For freedom! For freedom to live--shall knaves and scriveners strangle her? For freedom to pray--they rob God, and defile His temples! For freedom to walk abroad--the King of France is a captive. Need I say more?"
"No! No!" they cried, waving hats and swords. "No! No!"
"Then I will not," he answered hardily. "I will use no more words! But I will show that here at least, at Nîmes at least, God and the King are honoured, and their servants are free! Give me your escort, gentlemen, and we will walk through the town and visit the King's posts, and see if any here dare cry, 'A bas le Roi!'"
They answered with a roar of assent and menace that shook the very tower; and instantly trooping to the ladder, began to descend by it to the roof of the house, and so to the staircase. Sitting on the battlements of the tower, I watched them pass in a long stream across the leads below, their hilts and buckles glittering in the sunshine, their ribbons waving in the breeze, their voices sharp and high. I thought them, as I watched, a gallant company; the greater part were young, and all had a fine air; not without sympathy I saw them vanish one by one in the head of the staircase, by which I had ascended. One half had disappeared when I felt a touch on my arm, and found Froment, the last to leave, standing by my side.
"You will stay here, Monsieur," he said, in an undertone of meaning, his eyes lowered to meet mine; "if the worst happens, I need not charge you to look to Mademoiselle."
"Worst or best, I will look to her," I answered.
"Thanks," he said, his lip curling, and an ugly light for an instant flashing in his eyes. "But in the latter case I will look to her myself. Don't forget, that if I win, we have still to talk, Monsieur!"
"Yet, God grant you may win!" I exclaimed involuntarily.
"You have faith in your swordsmanship?" he answered, with a slight sneer; and then, in a different tone, he went on: "No, Monsieur, it is not that. It is that you are a French gentleman. And as such I leave Mademoiselle to your care without a qualm. God keep you!"
"And you," I said. And I saw him go after the others.
It was then about five o'clock. The sun was up, and the tower-roof, left silent and in my sole possession, seemed so near the sky, seemed so bright and peaceful and still, with the stillness of the early morning which is akin to innocence, that I looked about me dazed. I stood on a different plane from that of the world below, whence the roar of greeting that hailed Froment's appearance came up harshly. Another shout followed and another, that drove the affrighted pigeons in a circling cloud high above the roofs; and then the wave of sound began to roll away, moving with an indescribable note of menace southward through the city. And I remained alone on my tower, raised high above the strife.
Alone, with time to think; and to think some grim thoughts. Where now was the sweet union of which half the nation had been dreaming for weeks? Where the millennium of peace and fraternity to which Father Benôit, and the Syndics of Giron and Vlais, had looked forward? And the abolition of divisions? And the rights of man? And the other ten thousand blessings that philosophers and theorists had undertaken to create--the nature of man notwithstanding--their systems once adopted? Ay, where? From all the smiling country round came, for answer, the clanging of importunate bells. From the streets below rose for answer the sounds of riot and triumph. Along this or that road, winding ribbon-like across the plain, hurried little flocks of men--now seen for the first time--with glittering arms; and last and worst--when some half-hour had elapsed, and I still watched--from a distant suburb westward boomed out a sudden volley, and then dropping shots. The pigeons still wheeled, in a shining, shifting cloud, above the roofs, and the sparrows twittered round me, and on the tower, and on the roof below, where a few domestics clustered, all was sunshine and quiet and peace. But down in the streets, there, I knew that death was at work.
Still, for a time, I felt little excitement. It was early in the day; I expected no immediate issue; and I listened almost carelessly, following the train of thought I have traced, and gloomily comparing this scene of strife with the brilliant promises of a few months before. But little by little the anxiety of the servants who stood on the roof below, infected me. I began to listen more acutely; and to fancy that the tide of conflict was rolling nearer, that the cries and shots came more quickly and sharply to the ear. At last, in a place near the barracks, and not far off, I distinguished little puffs of thin white smoke rising above the roofs, and twice a rattling volley in the same quarter shook the windows. Then in one of the streets immediately below me, the whole length of which was visible, I saw people running--running towards me.
I called to the servants to know what it was.
"They are attacking the arsenal, Monsieur," one answered, shading his eyes.
"Who?" I said.
But he only shrugged his shoulders and looked out more intently. I followed his example, but for a time nothing happened; then on a sudden, as if a door were opened that hitherto had shut off the noise, a babel of shouts burst out and a great crowd entered the nearer end of the street below me, and pouring along it with loud cries and brandished arms--and a crucifix and a little body of monks in the middle--swirled away round the farthest corner, and were gone. For some time, however, I could still hear the burthen of their cries, and trace it towards the barracks, whence the crackle of musketry came at intervals; and I concluded that it was a reinforcement, and that Froment had sent for it. After that, chancing to look down, I saw that half the servants, below me, had vanished, and that figures were beginning to skulk about the streets hitherto deserted; and I began to tremble. The crisis had come sooner than I had thought.
I called to one of the men and asked him where the ladies were.
He looked up at me with a pale face. "I don't know, Monsieur," he answered rapidly; and he looked away again.
"They are below?"
But he was watching too intently to answer, and only shook his head impatiently. I was unwilling to leave my place on the roof, and I called to him to take my compliments to Madame St. Alais and ask her to ascend. It seemed strange that she had not done so, for women are not generally lacking in the desire to see.
But the man was too frightened to think of any one but himself--I fancy he was one of the cooks--and he did not move; while his companions only cried: "Presently, presently, Monsieur!"
At that, however, I lost my temper; and, going to the ladder, I ran down it, and strode towards them. "You rascals!" I cried. "Where are the ladies?"
One or two turned to me with a start. "Pardon, Monsieur?"
"Where are the ladies?" I repeated impatiently.
"Ah! I did not understand!" the nearest answered glibly. "Gone to the church to pray, Monsieur."
"To the church?"
"To be sure. By the Capuchins."
"And they are not here?"
"No, Monsieur," he answered, his eyes straying. "But--what is that?"
And, diverted by something, he skipped nimbly from me, his cheek a shade paler. I followed him to the parapet, and looked over. The view was not so wide as from the tower above, but the main street leading southward could be seen, and it was full of people; of scattered groups and handfuls, all coming towards us, some running, at an easy pace, while others walked quickly, four or five abreast, and often looked behind them.
The servants never doubted what it meant. In a trice the group broke up. With a muttered, "We are beaten!" they ran pell-mell across the sunny leads to the head of the staircase, and began to descend. I waited awhile, looking and fearing; but the stream of fugitives ever continued and increased, the pace grew quicker, the last comers looked more frequently behind them and handled their arms; the din of conflict, of yells, and cries, and shots, seemed to be approaching; and in a moment I made up my mind to act. The staircase was clear now; I ran quickly down it as far as the door on the upper floor, by which I had entered the house that evening before. I tried this, but recoiled; the door was locked. With a cry of vexation, my haste growing feverish--for now, in the darkness of the staircase, I was in ignorance what was happening, and pictured the worst--I went on, descending round and round, until I reached the cloister-like hall, at the bottom.
I found this choked with men, armed, grim-faced, and furious; and beset by other men who still continued to pour in from the street. A moment later and I should have found the staircase stopped by the stream of people ascending; and I must have remained on the roof. As it was, I could not for a minute or two force myself through the press, but was thrust against a wall, and pinned there by the rush inwards. Next me, however, I found one of the servants in like case, and I seized him by the sleeve. "Where are the ladies?" I said. "Have they returned? Are they here?"
"I don't know," he said, his eyes roving.
"Are they still at the church?"
"Monsieur, I don't know," he answered impatiently; and then seeing, I think, the man for whom he was searching, he shook me off, with the churlishness of fear, and, flinging himself into the crowd, was gone.
All the place was such a hurly-burly of men entering and leaving, shouting orders, or forcing themselves through the press, that I doubted what to do. Some were crying for Froment, others to close the doors; one that all was lost, another to bring up the powder. The disorder was enough to turn the brain, and for a minute I stood in the heart of it, elbowed and pushed, and tossed this way and that. Where were the women? Where were the women? The doubt distracted me. I seized half a dozen of the nearest men, and asked them; but they only cried out fiercely that they did not know--how should they?--and shook me off savagely and escaped as the servant had. For all here, with a few exceptions, were of the commoner sort. I could see nothing of Froment, nothing of St. Alais or the leaders, and only one or two of the gallants who had gone with them.
I do not think that I was ever in a more trying position. Denise might be still at the church and in peril there; or she might be in the streets exposed to dangers on which I dare not dwell; or, on the other hand, she might be safe in the next room, or upstairs; or on the roof. In the unutterable confusion, it was impossible to know or learn, or even move quickly; my only hope seemed to be in Froment's return, but after waiting a minute, which seemed a lifetime, in the hope of seeing him, I lost patience and battled my way through the press to a door, which appeared to lead to the main part of the house.
Passing through it, I found the same disorder ruling; here men, bringing up powder from the cellars, blocked the passage; there others appeared to be rifling the house. I had little hope of finding those whom I sought below stairs; and after glancing this way and that without result, I lighted on a staircase, and ascending quickly to the second floor, hastened to Denise's room. The door was locked.
I hammered on it madly and called, and waited, and listened, and called again; but I heard no sound from within; convinced at last. I left it and tried the nearest doors. The two first were locked also, and the rooms as silent; the third and fourth were open and empty. The last I entered was a man's.
The task was no long one, and occupied less than a minute. But all the time, while I rapped and listened and called, though the corridor in which I moved was quiet as death and echoed my footsteps, the house below rang with cries and shouts and hurrying feet; and I was in a fever. Madame might be on the roof. I turned that way meaning to ascend. Then I reflected that if I climbed to it I might find the staircase blocked when I came to descend again; and, cursing my folly for leaving the hall--simply because my quest had failed--I hurried back to the stairs, and dashed recklessly down them, and, stemming as well as I could the tide of people that surged and ebbed about the lower floor, I fought my way back to the hall.
I was just in time. As I entered by one door Froment entered by the other, with a little band of his braves; of whom several, I now observed, wore green ribbons--the Artois colours. His great stature raising him above the crowd of heads, I saw that he was wounded; a little blood was running down his cheek, and his eyes shone with a brilliance almost of madness. But he was still cool; he had still so much the command, not only of himself, but of those round him, that the commotion grew still and abated under his eye. In a moment men who before had only tumbled over and embarrassed one another, flew to their places; and, though the howling of a hostile mob could plainly be heard at the end of the street, and it was clear that he had fallen back before an overwhelming force, resolution seemed in a moment to take the place of panic, and hope of despair.
Standing on the threshold, and pointing this way, and that, with a discharged pistol which he held in his hand, he gave a few short, sharp orders for the barricading of the door, and saw them carried out, and sent this man to one post, and that man to another. Then, the crowd, which had before cumbered the place, melting as if by magic, he saw me forcing my way to him. And he beckoned to me.
If he played a part, then let me say, once for all, he played it nobly. Even now, when I guessed that all was lost, I read no fear and no envy in his face; and in what he said there was no ostentation.
"Get out quickly," he muttered, in an undertone, forestalling by a hasty gesture the excited questions I had on my lips, "through yonder door, and by the little postern at the foot of the other staircase. Go by the east gate, and you will find horses at the St. Geneviève outside. It is all over here!" he added, wringing my hand hard, and pushing me towards the door.
"But Mademoiselle?" I cried; and I told him that she was not in the house.
"What?" he said, pausing and looking at me, with his face grown suddenly dark. "Are you mad? Do you mean that she has gone out?"
"She is not here," I answered. "I am told that she went to the church with Madame St. Alais, and has not returned."
"That beldam!" he exclaimed, with a terrible oath, and then, "God help them!" he said--twice. And after a moment of silence, meeting my eyes and reading the horror in them, he laughed harshly. "After all, what matter?" he said recklessly. "We shall all go together! Let us go like gentlemen. I did what I could. Do you hear that?"
He held up his hand, as a roar of musketry shook the house; and he gave an order. The small windows had been stopped with paving stones, the door made solid with the wall behind it; and daylight being shut out, lamps had been lighted, which gave the long whitewashed, stone-groined room a strange sombre look. Or it was the grim faces I saw round me had that effect.
"I am afraid that the St. Alais are cut off in the Arènes," he said coolly. "And they are not enough to man the walls. Those cursed Cevennols have been too many for us. As for our friends--it is as I expected; they have left me to die like a bull in the ring. Well, we must die goring."
But in the midst of my admiration of his courage a kind of revulsion seized me. "And Denise?" I said, grasping his arm fiercely. "Are we to leave her to perish?"
He looked at me, his lip curling. "True," he said, with a sneering smile. "I forgot. You are not of us."
"I am thinking of her!" I cried, raging. And in that moment I hated him.
But his mood changed while he looked at me. "You are right, Monsieur," he said, in a different tone. "Go! There may be a chance; but the church is by the Capuchins, and those dogs were baying round it when we fell back. They are ten to one, or--still there may be a chance," he continued with decision. "Go, and if you find her, and escape, do not forget Froment of Nîmes."
"By the postern?" I said.
"Yes--take this," he answered; and abruptly drawing a pistol from his pocket, he forced it on me. "Go, and I must go too. Good fortune, Monsieur, and farewell. And you, bark away, you dogs!" he continued bitterly, addressing the unconscious mob. "The bull is on foot yet, and will toss some of you before the ring closes!"
With that word he thrust me towards the door that led to the inner hall and the postern; and, knowing, as I did, that every moment I delayed might stand for a life, and that within a minute or two at most the rear of the building would be beset, and my chance of egress lost, it was to be expected that I should not hesitate.
Yet I did. The main body of Froment's followers had flocked upstairs, whence they could be heard firing from the roof and windows. He stood almost alone in the middle of the floor; in the attitude of one listening and thinking, while a group of green ribbons, who seemed to be the most determined of his followers, hung growling about the barricaded door. Something in the gloomy brightness of the room, and the disorder of the barricaded windows, something in the loneliness of his figure as he stood there, appealed to me; I even took one step towards him. But at that moment he looked up, his face grown dark; and he waved me off with a gesture almost of rage. I knew then that I had but a small part of his thoughts; and that at this moment, while the edifice he had built up with so much care and so much risk was crumbling about him, he was thinking not of us, but of those who had promised and failed him; who had given good words, and left him to perish. And I went.
Yet even for that moment of delay it seemed that I might pay too dearly. A dozen steps brought me to the low-browed door he had indicated, in the thickness of the wall at the foot of the main staircase. But already a man was adjusting the last bar. I cried to him to open. "Open! I must go out!" I cried.
"Dieu!It is too late!" he said, with a dark glance at me.
My heart sank; I feared he was right. Still he began to unbar, though grudgingly, and in half a minute we had the door loose. With a pistol in his hand, he opened it on the chain and looked out. It opened on a narrow passage--which, God be thanked, was still empty. He dropped the chain, and almost thrust me out, cried, "To the left!" and then, as dazzled by the sunlight I turned that way, I heard the door slam behind me and the chain rattle as it was linked again.
The houses that rose on each side somewhat deadened the noise of the mob and the firing; but as I hurried down the alley, bareheaded and with the pistol which Froment had given me firmly clutched in my hand, I heard a fresh spirt of noise behind me, and knew that the assailants had entered the passage by the farther end; and that had I waited a moment longer I should have been too late.
As it was, my position was sufficiently forlorn, if it was not hopeless. Alone and a stranger, without hat or badge, knowing little of the streets, I might blunder at any corner into the arms of one of the parties--and be massacred. I had a notion that the church of the Capuchins was that which I had visited near Madame Catinot's; and my first thought was to gain the main street leading in that direction. This was not so easy, however; the alley in which I found myself led only into a second passage equally strait and gloomy. Entering this, I turned after a moment's hesitation to the left, but before I had gone a dozen paces I heard shouting in front of me; and I halted and retraced my steps. Hurrying in the other direction, I found myself in a minute in a little gloomy well-like court, with no second outlet that I could see, where I stood a moment panting and at a loss, rendered frantic and almost desperate by the thought that, while I hovered there uncertain, the die might be cast, and those whom I sought perish for lack of my aid.
I was about to return, resolved to face at all risks the party of rioters whom I heard behind me, when an open window in the lowest floor of one of the houses that stood round the court caught my eye. It was not far from the ground, and to see was to determine; the house must have an outlet on the street. In a dozen strides I crossed the court, and resting one hand on the sill of the window, vaulted into the room, alighted sideways on a stool, and fell heavily to the floor.
I was up in a moment unhurt, but with a woman's scream ringing in my ears, and a woman, a girl, cowering from me, white-faced, her back to the door. She had been kneeling, praying probably, by the bed; and I had almost fallen on her. When I looked she screamed again; I called to her in heaven's name to be silent.
"The door! Only the door!" I cried. "Show it me. I will hurt no one."
"Who are you?" she muttered. And still shrinking from me, she stared at me with distended eyes.
"Mon Dieu!What does it matter?" I answered fiercely. "The door, woman! The door into the street!"
I advanced upon her, and the same fear which had paralysed her gave her sense again. She opened the door beside her, and pointed dumbly down a passage. I hurried through the passage, rejoicing at my success, but before I could unbar the door that I found facing me a second woman came out of a room at the side, and saw me, and threw up her hands with a cry of terror.
"Which is the way to the church of the Capuchins?" I said.
She clapped one hand to her side, but she answered. "To the left!" she gasped. "And then to the right! Are they coming?"
I did not stay to ask whom she meant, but getting the door open at last I sprang through the doorway. One look up and down the street, however, and I was in again, and the door closed behind me. My eyes met the woman's, and without a word she snatched up the bar I had dropped and set it in the sockets. Then she turned and ran up the stairs, and I followed her, the girl into whose room I had leapt, and whose scared face showed for a second at the end of the passage, disappearing like a rabbit, as we passed her.
I followed the woman to the window of an upper room, and we looked out, standing back and peering fearfully over the sill. No need, now, to ask why I had returned so quickly. The roar of many voices seemed in a moment to fill all the street, while the casement shook with the tread of thousands and thousands of advancing feet, as, rank after rank, stretching from wall to wall, the mob, or one section of it, swept by, the foremost marching in order, shoulder to shoulder, armed with muskets, and in some kind of uniform, the rearmost a savage rabble with naked arms and pikes and axes, who looked up at the windows, and shook their fists and danced and leapt as they went by, with a great shout of "Aux Arènes! Aux Arènes!"
In themselves they were a sight to make a quiet man's blood run chill; but they had that in their midst, seeing which the woman beside me clutched my arm and screamed aloud. On six long pikes, raised high above the mob, moved six severed heads--one, the foremost, bald and large, and hideously leering. They lifted these to the windows, and shook their gory locks in sport; and so went by, and in a moment the street was quiet again.
The woman, trembling in a chair, muttered that they had sacked La Vierge, the red cabaret, and that the bald head was a town-councillor's, her neighbour's. But I did not stay to listen. I left her where she was, and, hurrying down again, unbarred the door and went out. All was strangely quiet again. The morning sun shone bright and warm on the long empty street, and seemed to give the lie to the thing I had seen. Not a living creature was visible this way or that; not a face at the window. I stood a moment in the middle of the road, disconcerted; puzzled by the bright stillness, and uncertain which way I had been going. At last I remembered the woman's directions, and set off on the heels of the mob, until I reached the first turning on the right. I took this, and had not gone a hundred yards before I recognised, a little in front of me, Madame Catinot's house.
It showed to the sunshine a wide blind front, long rows of shuttered windows, and not a sign of life. Nevertheless, here was something I knew, something which wore a semblance of familiarity, and I hailed it with hope; and, flinging myself on the door, knocked long and recklessly. The noise seemed fit to wake the dead; it boomed and echoed in every doorway of the empty street, that on the evening of my arrival had teemed with traffic; I shivered at the sound--I shivered standing conspicuous on the steps of the house, expecting a score of windows to be opened and heads thrust out.
But I had not yet learned how the extremity of panic benumbs; or how strong is the cowardly instinct that binds the peaceful man to his hearth when blood flows in the streets. Not a face showed at a casement, not a door opened; worse, though I knocked again and again, the house I would awaken remained dead and silent. I stood back and gazed at it, and returned, and hammered again, thinking this time nothing of myself.
But without result. Or not quite. Far away at the end of the street the echo of my knocking dwelt a little, then grew into a fuller, deeper sound--a sound I knew. The mob was returning.
I cursed my folly then for lingering; thought of the passage in the rear of the house that led to the church, found the entrance to it, and in a moment was speeding through it. The distant roar grew nearer and louder, but now I could see the low door of the church, and I slackened my pace a little. As I did so the door before me opened, and a man looked out. I saw his face before he saw me, and read it; saw terror, shame, and rage written on its mean features; and in some strange way I knew what he was going to do before he did it. A moment he glared abroad, blinking and shading his eyes in the sunshine, then he spied me, slid out, and with an indescribable Judas look at me, fled away.
He left the door ajar--I knew him in some way for the door-keeper, deserting his post; and in a moment I was in the church and face to face with a sight I shall remember while I live; for that which was passing outside, that which I had seen during the last few minutes, gave it a solemnity exceeding even that of the strange service I had witnessed there before.
The sun shut out, a few red altar lamps shed a sombre light on the pillars and the dim pictures and the vanishing spaces; above all, on a vast crowd of kneeling women, whose bowed heads and wailing voices as they chanted the Litany of the Virgin, filled the nave.
There were some, principally on the fringe of the assembly, who rocked themselves to and fro, weeping silently, or lay still as statues with their foreheads pressed to the cold stones; whilst others glanced this way and that with staring eyes, and started at the slightest sound, and moaned prayers with white lips. But more and more, the passionate utterance of the braver souls laid bonds on the others; louder and louder the measured rhythm of "Ora pro nobis! Ora pro nobis!" rose and swelled through the vaults of the roof; more and more fervent it grew, more and more importunate, wilder the abandonment of supplication, until--until I felt the tears rise in my throat, and my breast swell with pity and admiration--and then I saw Denise.
She knelt between her mother and Madame Catinot, nearly in the front row of those who faced the high altar. Whence I stood, I had a side view of her face as she looked upward in rapt adoration--that face which I had once deemed so childish. Now at the thought that she prayed, perhaps for me--at the thought that this woman so pure and brave, that though little more than a child, and soft, and gentle, and maidenly, she could bear herself with no shadow of quailing in this stress of death--at the thought that she loved me, and prayed for me, I felt myself more or less than a man. I felt tears rising, I felt my breast heaving, and then--and then as I went to drop on my knees, against the great doors on the farther side of the church, came a thunderous shock, followed by a shower of blows and loud cries for admittance.
A horrible kind of shudder ran through the kneeling crowd, and here and there a woman screamed and sprang up and looked wildly round. But for a few moments the chant still rose monotonously and filled the building; louder and louder the measured rhythm of "Ora pro nobis! Ora pro nobis!" still rose and fell and rose again with an intensity of supplication, a pathos of repetition that told of bursting hearts. At length, however, one of the leaves of the door flew open, and that proved too much; the sound sent three parts of the congregation shrieking to their feet--though a few still sang. By this time I was half way through the crowd, pressing to Denise's side; before I could reach her the other door gave way, and a dozen men flocked in tumultuously. I had a glimpse of a priest--afterwards I learnt that it was Father Benôit--standing to oppose them with a cross upraised; and then, by the dim light, which to them was darkness, I saw--unspeakable relief--that the intruders were not the leaders of the mob, but foremost the two St. Alais, blood-stained and black with powder, with drawn swords and clothes torn; and behind them a score of their followers.
In their relief women flung themselves on the men's necks, and those who stood farther away burst into loud sobbing and weeping. But the men themselves, after securing the doors behind them, began immediately to move across the church to the smaller exit on the alley; one crying that all was lost, and another that the east gate was open, while a third adjured the women to separate--adding that in the neighbouring houses they would be safe, but that the church would be sacked; and that even now the Calvinists were bursting in the gates of the monastery through which the fugitives had retreated, after being driven out of the Arènes.
All, on the instant, was panic and wailing and confusion. I have heard it said since that the worst thing the men could have done was to take the church in their flight, and that had they kept aloof the women would not have been disturbed; that, as a fact, and in the event, the church was not sacked. But in such a hell as was Nîmes that morning, with the kennels running blood, and men's souls surprised by sudden defeat, it was hard to decide what was best; and I blame no one.
A rush for the door followed the man's words. It drove me a little farther from Denise; but as she and the group round her held back and let the more timid or selfish go first, I had time to gain her side. She had drawn the hood of her cloak close round her face, and until I touched her arm did not see me. Then, without a word, she clung to me--she clung to me, looking up; I saw her face under the hood, and it was happy. God! It was happy, even in that scene of terror!
After that, Madame St. Alais, though she greeted me with a bitter smile, had no power to repel me. "You are quick, Monsieur, to profit by your victory," she said, in a scathing tone. And that was all. Unrebuked, I passed my arm round Denise, and followed close on Louis and Madame Catinot; while Monsieur le Marquis, after speaking with his mother, followed. As he did so his eye fell on me, but he only smiled, and to something Madame said, answered aloud, "Mon Dieu, Madame; what does it matter? We have thrown the last stake and lost. Let us leave the table!"
She dropped her hood over her face; and even in that moment of fear and excitement I found something tragic in the act, and on a sudden pitied her. But it was no time for sentiment or pity; the pursuers were not far behind the pursued. We were still in the church and some paces from the threshold giving on the alley, when a rush of footsteps outside the great door behind us made itself heard, and the next instant the doors creaked under the blows hailed upon them. It was a question whether they would stand until we were out, and I felt the slender figure within my arm quiver and press more closely to me. But they held--they held, and an instant later the crowd before us gave way, and we were outside in the daylight, in the alley, hurrying quickly down it towards Madame Catinot's house.
It seemed to me that we were safe then, or nearly safe; so glad was I to find myself in the open air and out of the church. The ground fell away a little towards Madame Catinot's, and I could see the line of hastening heads bobbing along before us, and here and there white faces turned to look back. The high walls on either hand softened the noise of the riot. Behind me were M. le Marquis and Madame; and again behind them three or four of M. le Marquis' followers brought up the rear. I looked back beyond these and saw that the alley opposite the church was still clear, and that the pursuers had not yet passed through the church; and I stooped to whisper a word of comfort to Denise. I stooped perhaps longer than was necessary, for before I was aware of it I found myself stumbling over Louis' heels. A backward wave sweeping up the alley had brought him up short and flung him against me. With the movement, as we all jostled one another, there arose far in front and rolled up the passage between the high walls a sound of misery; a mingling of groans and screams and wailing such as I hope I may never hear again. Some strove furiously to push their way back towards the church, and some, not understanding what was amiss, to go forwards, and some fell, and were trodden under foot; and for a few seconds the long narrow alley heaved and seethed in an agony of panic.
Engaged in saving Denise from the crush and keeping her on her feet, I did not, for a moment, understand. The first thought I had was that the women--three out of four were women--had gone mad or given way to a shameful, selfish terror. Then, as our company staggering and screaming rolled back upon us, until it filled but half the length of the passage, I heard in front a roar of cruel laughter, and saw over the intervening heads a serried mass of pike-points filling the end of the passage opposite Madame Catinot's house. Then I understood. The Calvinists had cut us off; and my heart stood still.
For there was no retreat. I looked behind me, and saw the alley by the church-porch choked with men who had reached it through the church; alive with harsh mocking faces, and scowling eyes, and cruel thirsty pikes. We were hemmed in; in the long high walls, which it was impossible to scale, was no door or outlet short of Madame Catinot's house--and that was guarded. And before and behind us were the pikes.
I dream of that scene sometimes; of the sunshine, hot and bright, that lay ghastly on white faces distorted with fear; of women fallen on their knees and lifting hands this way and that; of others screaming and uttering frenzied prayers, or hanging on men's necks; of the long writhing line of humanity, wherein fear, showing itself in every shape, had its way; above all of the fiendish jeers and laughter of the victors, as they cried to the men to step out, or hurled vile words at the women.
Even Nîmes, mother of factions, parent of a hundred quarterless brawls, never saw a worse scene, or one more devilish. For a few seconds in the surprise of this trap, in the sudden horror of finding ourselves, when all seemed well, at grips with death, I could only clutch Denise to me tighter and tighter, and hide her eyes on my breast, as I leaned against the wall and groaned with white lips. O God, I thought, the women! The women! At such a time a man would give all the world that there might be none, or that he had never loved one.
St. Alais was the first to recover his presence of mind and act--if that could be called action which was no more than speech, since we were hopelessly enmeshed and outnumbered. Putting Madame behind him he waved a white kerchief to the men by the door of the church--who stood about thirty paces from us--and adjured them to let the women pass; even taunting them when they refused, and gibing at them as cowards, who dared not face the men unencumbered.
But they only answered with jeers and threats, and savage laughter. "No, no, M. le Prêtre!" they cried. "No, no! Come out and taste steel! Then, perhaps, we will let the women go! Or perhaps not!"
"You cowards!" he cried.
But they only brandished their arms and laughed, shrieking: "A bas les traîtres! A bas les prêtres!Stand out! Stand out, Messieurs!" they continued, "or we will come and pluck you from the women's skirts!"
He glowered at them in unspeakable rage. Then a man on their side stepped out and stilled the tumult. "Now listen!" said this fellow, a giant, with long black hair falling over a tallowy face. "We will give you three minutes to come out and be piked. Then the women shall go. Skulk there behind them, and we fire on all, and their blood be on your heads."
St. Alais stood speechless. At last, "You are fiends!" he cried in a voice of horror. "Would you kill us before their eyes?"
"Ay, or in their laps!" the man retorted, amid a roar of laughter. "So decide, decide!" he continued, dancing a clumsy step and tossing a half-pike round his head. "Three minutes by the clock there! Come out, or we fire on all! It will be a dainty pie! A dainty Catholic pie, Messieurs!"
St. Alais turned to me, his face white, his eyes staring; and he tried to speak. But his voice failed.
And then, of what happened next I cannot tell; for, for a minute, all was blurred. I remember only how the sun lay hot on the wall beyond his face, and how black the lines of mortar showed between the old thin Roman bricks. We were about twenty men and perhaps fifty women, huddled together in a space some forty yards long. Groans burst from the men's lips, and such as had women in their arms--and they were many--leaned against the wall and tried to comfort them, and tried to put them from them. One man cried curses on the dogs who would murder us, and shook his fists at them; and some rained kisses on the pale senseless faces that lay on their breasts--for, thank God, many of the women had fainted; while others, like St. Alais, looked mute agony into eyes that told it again, or clasped a neighbour's hand, and looked up into a sky piteously blue and bright. And I--I do not know what I did, save look into Denise's eyes and look and look! There was no senselessness in them.
Remember that the sun shone on all this, and the birds twittered and chirped in the gardens beyond the walls; that it wanted an hour or two of high noon, a southern noon; that in the crease of the valley the Rhone sparkled between its banks, and not far off the sea broke rippling and creaming on the shore of Les Bouches; that all nature rejoiced, and only we--we, pent between those dreadful walls, those scowling faces, saw death imminent--black death shutting out all things.
A hand touched me; it was St. Alais' hand. I think, nay, I know, for I read it in his face, that he meant to be reconciled to me. But when I turned to him--or it may be it was the sight of his sister's speechless misery moved him--he had another thought. As the black-haired giant called "One minute gone!" and his following howled, M. le Marquis threw up his hand.
"Stay!" he cried, with the old gesture of command. "Stay! There is one man here who is not of us! Let him pass first, and go!" And he pointed to me. "He has no part with us. I swear it!"
A roar of cruel laughter was the answer. Then, "He that is not with me is against me!" the giant quoted impiously. And they jeered again.
On that, I take no credit for what I did. In such moments of exaltation men are not accountable, and, for another thing, I knew that they would not listen, that I risked nothing. And trembling with rage I flung back their words. "I am against you!" I cried. "I would rather die here with these, than live with you! You stain the earth! You pollute the air! You are fiends----"
No more, for with a shrill laugh the man next me, a mere lad, half-witted, I think, and the same who had cursed them, sprang by me and rushed on the pike-points. Half a dozen met in his breast before our eyes--before our eyes--and with a wild scream he flung up his arms and was borne back against the side-wall dead and gushing blood.
Instinctively I had covered Denise's face that she might not see. And it was well; for at that--there was a kind of mercy in it, and let me tell it quickly--the wretches tasting blood broke loose, and rushed on us. I saw St. Alais thrust his mother behind him, and almost with the same movement fling himself on the pikes; and I, pushing Denise down into the angle of the wall--though she clung to me and prayed to me--killed the first that came at me with Froment's pistol, and the next also, with the other barrel at point blank distance--feeling no fear, but only passion and rage. The third bore me down with his pike fixed in my shoulder, and for a moment I saw only the sky, and his scowling face black against it; and shut my eyes, expecting the blow that must follow.
But none did follow. Instead a weight fell on me, and I began to struggle, and a whole battle, it seemed to me, was fought over me--in that horrible slaughterhouse alley, where they dragged men from women's arms, and forced them, screaming, to the wall, and stabbed them to death without pity; and things were done of which I dare not tell!