The Trampling of the Lilies

by Rafael Sabatini

  CHAPTER V. THE SHEEP TURNED WOLVES

  There were roars of anger and screams of terror in the night, and abovethe Chateau de Bellecour the inky blackness of the heavens was broken bya dull red glow, which the distant wayfarer might have mistaken for theroseate tint of dawn, were it possible for the dawn to restrict itselfto so narrow an area.

  Ever and anon a tongue of flame would lick up into the night towardsthat russet patch of sky, betraying the cause of it and proclaimingthat incendiaries were at work. Above the ominous din that told ofthe business afoot there came now and again the crack of a musket,and dominating all other sounds was the sullen roar of the revoltedpeasants, the risen serfs, the rebellious vassals of the Siegneur deBellecour.

  For time has sped and has much altered in the speeding. Four years havegone by since the night on which the lacerated Caron la Boulaye wassmuggled out of Bellecour in Robespierre's berline and in that fouryears much of the things that were prophesied have come to pass--aye, and much more besides that was undreamt of at the outset by therevolutionaries. A gruesome engine that they facetiously calledthe National Razor--invented and designed some years ago by one Dr.Guillotin--is but an item in the changes that have been, yet an itemthat in its way has become a very factor. It stands not over-high, yetthe shadow of it has fallen athwart the whole length and breadth ofFrance, and in that shadow the tyrants have trembled, shaken to the verysouls of them by the rude hand of fear; in that shadow the spurned anddowntrodden children of the soil have taken heart of grace. The bondsof servile cowardice that for centuries had trammelled them have beenshaken off like cobwebs, and they that were as sheep are now become thewolves that prey on those that preyed on them for generations.

  There is, in the whole of France, no corner so remote but that, sooneror later, this great upheaval has penetrated to it. Louis XVI.--orLouis Capet, as he is now more generally spoken of--has been arraigned,condemned and executed. The aristocrats are in full emigratory flightacross the frontiers--those that have not been rent by the vassals theyhad brought to bay, the people they had outraged. The Lilies of Francelie trampled under foot in the shambles they have made of that fairland, whilst overhead the tricolour--that symbol of the new trinity,Liberty, Equality, Fraternity--is flaunted in the breeze.

  A few of the more proud and obstinate--so proud and obstinate as to findit a thing incredible that the order should indeed change and the oldregime pass away--still remain, and by their vain endeavours to lordit in their castles provoke such scenes as that enacted at Bellecour inFebruary of '93 (by the style of slaves) or Pluviose of the year Oneof the French Republic, as it shall presently come to be known in theannals of the Revolution.

  Bellecour, the most arrogant of arrogants, had stood firm, anddesperately contrived through all these months of revolution to maintainhis dominion in his corner of Picardy. But even he was beginning torealise that the end was at hand, and he made his preparations toemigrate. Too proud, however, to permit his emigration to savour of aflight, he carried the leisureliness of his going to dangerous extremes.And now, on the eve of departure, he must needs pause to give a feteat once of farewell and in honour of his daughter's betrothal to theVicomte Anatole d'Ombreval. This very betrothal at so unpropitious aseason was partly no more than contrived by the Marquis that he mightmark his ignoring and his serene contempt of the upheaval and the newrule which it had brought.

  All that was left of the noblesse in Picardy had flocked that day to theChateau de Bellecour, and the company there assembled numbered perhapssome thirty gallants and some twenty ladies. A banquet there had been,which in the main was a gloomy function, for the King's death was toorecent a matter to be utterly lost sight of. Later, however, as thegenerous supply of wine did its work and so far thawed the ice ofapprehension that bound their souls as to dispose them to enjoy, atleast, the present hour in forgetfulness, there was a better humour inthe air. This developed, and so far indeed did it go that in the eveninga Pavane was suggested, and, the musicians being found, it was held inthe great salon of the Chateau.

  It was then that the first alarm had penetrated to their midst. It hadfound them a recklessly merry crew, good to behold in their silks andsatins, powder and patches, gold lace and red heels, moving with wavingfans, or hand on sword, and laced beaver under elbow, through thestately figures of the gavotte.

  Scared, white-faced lackeys had brought the news, dashing wildly inupon that courtly assembly. The peasants had risen and were marching onBellecour.

  Some of his sudden rage the Marquis vented by striking the servants'spokesman in the face.

  "Dare you bring me such a message?" he cried furiously.

  "But, my lord, what are we to do?" gasped the frightened lackey.

  "Do, fool?" returned Bellecour. "Why, close the gates and bid themreturn home as they value their lives. For if they give me trouble I'llhang a round dozen of them."

  Still was there that same big talk of hanging men. Still did it seemthat the Marquis of Bellecour accounted himself the same lord of lifeand death that he and his forbears had been for generations. But therewere others who thought differently. The music had ceased abruptly, anda little knot of gentlemen now gathered about the host, and urged him totake some measures of precaution. In particular they desired to ensurethe safety of the ladies who were being thrown into a great state ofalarm, so that of some of these were the screams that were heard in thatnight of terror. Bellecour's temper was fast gaining, and as helost control of himself the inherent brutality of his character cameuppermost.

  "Mesdames," he cried rudely, "this screeching will profit us nothing.Even if we must die, let us die becomingly, not shrieking like butcheredgeese."

  A dozen men raised their voices angrily against him in defence of thewomen he had slighted. But he waved them impatiently away.

  "Is this an hour in which to fall a-quarrelling among ourselves?" heexclaimed. "Or do you think it one in which a man can stop to choose hiswords? Sang-dieu! That screaming is a more serious matter than at firstmay seem. If these rebellious dogs should chance to hear it, it will bebut so much encouragement to them. A fearless front, a cold contempt,are weapons unrivalled if you would prevail against these mutinouscravens."

  But his guests were insistent that something more than fearless frontsand cold contempts should be set up as barriers between themselves andthe advancing peasantry. And in the end Bellecour impatiently quittedthe room to give orders for the barricading of the gates and thedefending of the Chateau, leaving behind him in the salon the verywildest of confusions.

  From the windows the peasantry could now be seen, by the light of theirtorches, marching up the long avenue that fronted the Chateau, andheaded by a single drum on which the bearer did no more than beat thestep. They were a fierce, unkempt band, rudely armed--some with scythes,some with sickles, some with hedge-knives, and some with hangers; whilsthere and there was one who carried a gun, and perhaps a bayonet as well.Nor were there men only in the rebellious ranks. There were an almostequal number of women in crimson caps, their bosoms bare, their headsdishevelled, their garments filthy and in rags--for the tooth of povertyhad bitten deeply into them during the past months.

  As they swung along to the rhythmical thud of the drum, their voiceswere raised in a fearful chorus that must have made one think of thechoirs of hell, and the song they sang was the song of Rouget de l'Isle,which all France had been singing these twelve months past:

  "Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons. Allons, marchons! Qu'un sang inpur Abreuve nos sillons!"

  Ever swelling as they drew nearer came the sound of that terriblehymn to the ears of the elegant, bejewelled, bepowdered company in theChateau. The gates were reached and found barred. An angry roar went upto Heaven, followed by a hail of blows upon the stout, ironbound oak,and an imperious call to open.

  In the courtyard below the Marquis had posted the handful of servantsthat remained faithful--for reasons that Heaven alone may discern--tothe fortunes of the house. He had
armed them with carbines and suppliedthem with ammunition. He had left them orders to hold off the mob fromthe outer gates as long as possible; but should these be carried, theywere to fall back into the Chateau itself, and make fast the doors.Meanwhile, he was haranguing the gentlemen--some thirty of them, as wehave seen--in the salon and urging them to arm themselves so that theymight render assistance.

  His instances were met with a certain coldness, which at last was givenexpression by the most elegant Vicomte d'Ombreval--the man who was aboutto become his son-in-law.

  "My dear Marquis," protested the young man, his habitually superciliousmouth looking even more supercilious than usual as he now spoke, "I begthat you will consider what you are proposing. We are your guests, weothers, and you ask us to defend your gates against your own peoplefor you! Surely, surely, sir, your first duty should have been to haveensured our safety against such mutinies on the part of the rabble ofBellecour."

  The Seigneur angrily stamped his foot. In his choler he was withinan ace of striking Ombreval, and might have done so had not thebroad-minded and ever-reasonable old Des Cadoux interposed at thatmoment to make clear to the Marquis's guests a situation than whichnothing could have been clearer. He put it to them that the timeswere changed, and that France was no longer what France had been; thatallowances must be made for M. de Bellecour, who was in no better casethan any other gentleman in that unhappy country! and finally, thateither they must look to arming and defending themselves or they mustsay their prayers and submit to being butchered with the ladies.

  "For ourselves," he concluded calmly, tapping his gold snuffbox andholding it out to Bellecour, for all the world with the air of onewho was discussing the latest fashion in wigs, "I can understand yourrepugnance at coming to blows with this obscene canaille. It is doingthem an honour of which they are not worthy. But we have these ladiesto think of, Messieurs, and--" he paused to apply the rappee tohis nostrils--"and we must exert ourselves to save them, howeverdisagreeable the course we may be compelled to pursue. Messieurs, I amthe oldest here; permit that I show you the way."

  His words were not without effect; they kindled chivalry in hearts that,after all, were nothing if not prone to chivalry--according to their ownlights--and presently something very near enthusiasm prevailed. But thesupercilious and very noble Ombreval still grumbled.

  "To ask me to fight this scum!" he ejaculated in horror "Pardi! It istoo much. Ask me to beat them off with a whip like a pack of curs, andI'll do it readily. But fight them--!"

  "Nothing could delight us more, Vicomte, than to see you beat them offwith a whip," Des Cadoux assured him. "Arm yourself with a whip, by allmeans, my friend, and let us witness the prodigies you can perform withit."

  "See what valour inflames the Vicomte, Suzanne," sneered a handsomewoman into Mademoiselle's ear. "With what alacrity he flies to arms thathe may defend you, even with his life."

  "M. d'Ombreval is behaving according to his lights," answered Suzannecoldly.

  "Ma foi, then his lights are unspeakably dim," was the contemptuousanswer.

  Mademoiselle gave no outward sign of the deep wound her pridewas receiving. The girl of nineteen, who had scorned the youngsecretary-lover in the park of Bellecour that morning four years ago,was developed into a handsome lady of three-and-twenty.

  "It would be beneath the dignity of his station to soil his hands insuch a conflict as my father has suggested," she said at last.

  "I wonder would it be beneath the dignity of his courage," mused thesame caustic friend. "But surely not, for nothing could be beneaththat."

  "Madame!" exclaimed Suzanne, her cheeks reddening; for as of old, andlike her father, she was quickly moved to anger. "Will it please you toremember that M. d'Ombreval is my affianced husband?"

  "True," confessed the lady, no whit abashed. "But had I not been told soI had accounted him your rejected suitor, who, broken-hearted, gives nothought either to his own life or to yours."

  In a pet, Mademoiselle gave her shoulder to the speaker and turnedaway. In spite of the words with which she had defended him, Suzannewas disappointed in her betrothed, and yet, in a way, she understood hisbearing to be the natural fruit of that indomitable pride of which shehad observed the outward signs, and for which, indeed as much as for thebeauty of his person, she had consented to become his wife. After all,it was the outward man she knew. The marriage had been arranged, andthis was but their third meeting, whilst never for an instant had theybeen alone together. By her mother she had been educated up to theidea that it was eminently desirable she should become the Vicomtessed'Ombreval. At first she had endured dismay at the fact that she hadnever beheld the Vicomte, and because she imagined that he would be,most probably, some elderly roue, as did so often fall to the lot ofmaidens in her station. But upon finding him so very handsome to behold,so very noble of bearing, so lofty and disdainful that as he walked heseemed to spurn the very earth, she fell enamoured of him out of veryrelief, as well as because he was the most superb specimen of the othersex that it had ever been hers to observe.

  And now that she had caught a glimpse of the soul that dweltbeneath that mass of outward perfections it had cost her a pang ofdisappointment, and the poisonous reflection cast upon his courage bythat sardonic lady with whom she had talked was having its effect.

  But the time was too full of other trouble to permit her to indulge herthoughts overlong upon such a matter. A volley of musketry from belowcame to warn them of the happenings there. The air was charged with thehideous howls of the besieging mob, and presently there was a cryfrom one of the ladies, as a sudden glare of light crimsoned thewindow-panes.

  "What is that?" asked Madame de Bellecour of her husband.

  "They have fired the stables," he answered, through set teeth. "Isuppose they need light to guide them in their hell's work."

  He strode to the glass doors opening to the balcony the same balconyfrom which four years ago his guests had watched the flogging of LaBoulaye--and, opening them, he passed out. His appearance was greeted bya storm of execration. A sudden shot rang out, and the bullet, strikingthe wall immediately above him, brought down a shower of plaster on hishead. It had been fired by a demoniac who sat astride the great gateswaving his discharged carbine and yelling such ordures of speech as ithad never been the most noble Marquis's lot to have stood listening to.Bellecour never flinched. As calmly as if nothing had happened, he leantover the parapet and called to his men below.

  "Hold, there! Of what are you dreaming slumberers. Shoot me that fellowdown."

  Their guns had been discharged, but one of them, who had now completedhis reloading, levelled the carbine and fired. The figure on the gatesseemed to leap up from his sitting posture, and then with a scream hewent over, back to his friends without.

  The fired stables were burning gaily by now, and the cheeriest bonfireman could have desired on a dark night, and in the courtyard it wasbecome as light as day.

  The Marquis on the balcony was taking stock of his defences and makingrapid calculations in his mind. He saw no reason why, so wellprotected by those stout oaken gates they should not--if they were butresolute--eventually beat back the mob. And then, even as his couragewas rising at the thought, a deafening explosion seemed to shake theentire Chateau, and the gates--their sole buckler, upon whose shelter hehad been so confidently building--crashed open, half blown away by thegunpowder keg that had been fired against it.

  He had a fleeting glimpse of a stream of black fiends pouring throughthe dark gap and dashing with deafening yells into the crimson lightof the courtyard. He saw his little handful of servants retreatprecipitately within the Chateau. He heard the clang of the doorsthat were swung to just as the foremost of the rabble reached thethreshold--With all this clearly stamped upon his mind, he turned, andspringing into the salon he drew his sword.

  "To the stairs, Messieurs!" he cried "To the stairs!"

  And to the stairs they went. The extremity was now too great forargument. They dared not so much as l
ook at their women-folk, lest theyshould be unmanned by the sight of those huddled creatures--their finerybut serving to render them the more pitiable in their sickly affright.In a body the whole thirty of them swept from the room, and withBellecour 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, whilstfor a few the Marquis had even found carbines, they waited, with facesset and lips tight pressed for the end that they knew approached.

  Nor was their waiting long. As the peasants had blown down the gates sonow did they blow down the doors of the Chateau, and in the explosionthree of Bellecour's servants--who had stood too near--were killed. Overthe threshold they swarmed into the dark gulf of the great hall to thefoot of the staircase. But here they were at a disadvantage. The lightof the burning stables, shining through the open doorway, revealed themto the defenders, whilst they themselves looked up into the dark. Therewas 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 deadand wounded on the polished floor of the hall.

  Old M. des Cadoux laughed in the dark, as with his sword hanging fromhis wrist he tapped his snuff-box.

  "Ma foi," said he to his neighbour, "they are discovering that it isnot 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 atthe door, and presently a half-dozen of the rabble entered with torches,followed by some scores of their comrades. They paused at sight ofthat company ranged upon the stairs, as well they might, for a moreincongruous sight could scarcely be imagined. Across the bodies of theslain, and revealed by the lifting powder smoke, stood that little bandof thirty men, a blaze of gay colours, a sheen of silken hose, theirwigs curled and powdered, their costly ruffles scintillant with jewels;calm, and supercilious, mocking to a man. There was a momentary gaspof awe, and then the spell was broken by the aristocrats themselves. Apistol spoke, and a volley followed. In the hall some stumbled forward,some hurtled backward, and some sank down in nerveless heaps. But thosethat remained did not again retreat. Reinforced by others, that crowdedin behind, they charged boldly up the stairs, headed by a ragged,red capped giant named Souvestre--a man whom the Marquis had onceirreparably wronged.

  The sight of him was a revelation to Bellecour. This assault wasSouvestre's work; the fellow had been inciting the people of Bellecourfor the past twelve months, long indeed before the outbreak of therevolution proper, and at last he had roused them to the pitch ofaccompanying him upon his errand of tardy but relentless vengeance.

  With a growl the Marquis raised his pistol. But Souvestre saw themovement, and with a laugh he did the like. Simultaneously there weretwo reports, and Bellecour's arm fell shattered to his side. Souvestrecontinued to advance, his smoking pistol in one hand and brandishinga huge sabre with the other. Behind him, howling and roaring like thebeasts of prey they were become, surged the tenantry of Bellecour to paythe long-standing debt of hate to their seigneur.

  "Here," said Des Cadoux, with a grimace, "endeth the chapter of ourlives. I wonder, do they keep rappee in heaven?" He snapped down the lidof his gold snuffbox--that faithful companion and consoler of somany years--and cast it viciously at the head of one of the oncomingpeasants. Then tossing back the lace from his wrist he brought his swordinto guard and turned aside a murderous stroke which an assailant aimedat him.

  "Animal," he snapped viciously, as he set to work, "it is the first timethat my chaste blade has been crossed with such dirty steel as yours. Ihope, 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 thathad held the stairs lay weltering upon them as if in a last attempt tobarricade with their bodies what they could no longer defend with theirhands. A bare half-score remained standing, and amongst thesethat gallant old Cadoux, who had by now accounted for a half-dozensans-culottes, and was hence in high glee, a man rejuvenesced. Hissallies grew livelier and more barbed as the death-tide rose higherabout him. His one regret was that he had been so hasty in casting hissnuff box from him, for he was missing its familiar stimulus. At hisside the Marquis was fighting desperately, fencing with his left arm,and in the hot excitement seeming oblivious of the pain his broken rightmust be occasioning.

  "It is ended, old friend," he groaned at last, to Des Cadoux. "I amlosing strength, and I shall be done for in a moment. The women," healmost sobbed, "mon Dieu, the women!"

  Des Cadoux felt his old eyes grow moist, and the odd, fierce mirth thatseemed to have hitherto infected him went out like a candle thatis snuffed. But suddenly before he could make any answer, a new andunexpected sound, which dominated the din of combat, and seemed to causeall--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 thestep for the mob, but the steady and vigorous tattoo of many sticks uponmany skins.

  "What is it? Who comes?" were the questions that men asked one another,as both aristocrats and sansculottes paused in their bloody labours. Itwas close at hand. So close at hand that they could discern the trampof marching feet. In the infernal din of that fight upon the stairsthey had not caught the sound of this approach until now that thenew-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 thedoor 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 thestairs, overleaping the dead bodies that were piled upon them, and manya man slipping in that shambles and ending the descent on his back. Outinto the courtyard they swept: leaving that handful of gentlemen, theirfine clothes disordered, splashed with blood and grimed with powder,to question one another touching this portent, this miracle that seemedwrought by Heaven for their salvation.