Ninety-Three

All at once, buried and hidden by the brambles as he was, he heard above his head a terrible cry; it seemed to come from the very edge of the plateau, above the ravine. The Marquis raised his eyes and paused.

BOOK V

IN DÆMONE DEUS

I

FOUND, BUT LOST

When Michelle Fléchard first perceived the tower reddened by the rays of the setting sun, it was more than a league away; and this woman, nothing daunted by the distance, though scarcely able to put one foot before the other, kept bravely on her way. Women may be weak, but mothers are strong.

The sun had set: twilight came on, followed by the darkness of night; as she walked along, far away in the distance, from some invisible belfry, probably that of Parigné, she heard the clock strike eight, then nine. From time to time she paused to listen to something that sounded like heavy blows; but it might have been only the uncertain noises peculiar to the night.

She walked straight onward, crushing the furze and prickly heather beneath her bleeding feet. She was guided by a faint light issuing from the distant keep, which bathed the tower in a mysterious glow while it defined its outlines against the surrounding gloom. This light changed in measure as the sounds grew loud or faint.

The vast plateau across which Michelle Fléchard made her way was completely covered with grass and heather; neither house nor tree was to be seen. Its rise was almost imperceptible, and as far as the eye could reach, its long line was clearly defined against the dark horizon dotted with stars. She was supported, as she climbed, by the sight of the tower constantly before her eyes, and as she drew nearer, it gradually increased in size.

As we have just remarked, the muffled reports and the pallid gleams of light that issued from the tower were intermittent; dying away and then returning as they did, it seemed to the wretched mother in her distress like some agonizing enigma.

Suddenly they ceased, and with the sound, the light too died away; there was a moment of absolute silence, an appalling tranquillity, and then it was that Michelle Fléchard reached the edge of the plateau.

She saw beneath her feet a ravine, whose depths were hidden by the dim shadows of night; at a short distance, on the top of the plateau, the confused mass of wheels, slopes; and embrasures which formed the battery; and before her, indistinctly lighted by the burning matches of the guns, an enormous edifice that seemed built of shadows blacker than those that surrounded it.

This building consisted of a bridge, whose arches rested in the ravine, together with a kind of castle erected on the bridge, both castle and bridge supported by a round and lofty mass of masonry; this was the tower which had been that mother's distant goal. One could see the lights moving to and fro behind the loop-holes of the tower, and it was evident, from the noise issuing therefrom, that it was crowded with men, whose shadows were projected even as high as platform.

Michelle Fléchard could distinguish the vedettes of the camp near the battery, but the darkness and the underbrush concealed her from their view.

She had reached the edge of the plateau, and was so close to the bridge that it seemed as if she could almost touch it with her hand. The deep ravine alone separated her from it. She could distinguish even in the darkness the three stories of the bridge-castle.

She knew not how long she had been standing there, having lost all consciousness of time, absorbed in a silent contemplation of that yawning chasm and the gloomy building. What was it that was going on within. Was this the Tourgue? She felt that restless sense of expectation peculiar to travellers who have either just arrived or are on the eve of departure. As she stood listening and gazing around, she tried to think why she was there. Suddenly all objects vanished before her eyes.

A veil of smoke had suddenly obscured the object she was watching. A sharp pain forced her to close her eyes; but she had no sooner done so, than a light flashed upon them so intensely brilliant that her eyelids seemed transparent, and when she opened them again, the night had changed into day, but the light of that day, dreadful to look upon, was born of fire. What she saw was the outburst of a conflagration.

The smoke had changed from black to scarlet, from which at times a mighty flame leaped forth, with those fierce contortions peculiar to the lightning and the serpent. It darted forth like a tongue from some monstrous jaw; but it was really a window filled with fire, whose iron bars were already red hot, – a casement in the lower story of the bridge-castle, and the only part of the entire building that could now be seen. Even the plateau was shrouded in the smoke, and the edge of the ravine alone could be distinguished against the crimson flames.

Michelle Fléchard looked on in amazement. Smoke is a cloud; dreams come from the clouds; hardly realizing what she saw, she knew not what to do. Should she stay, or try to make her escape? She almost felt herself transported beyond the actual world.

There came a gust of wind, that rent the curtain of smoke and revealed through this gap the tragic Bastile, in all its grandeur, with its keep, its bridge, and its castle, dazzling and terrible, magnificently gilded by the light of the flames which were reflected upon it from summit to base. Michelle Fléchard could see everything by the awful glare of the flames.

Only the lower story of the bridge-castle was as yet burning.

Above it could be seen the two other stories, still intact, though resting as it were upon a bed of flames. From the edge of the plateau where she stood, through the smoke and fire, Michelle Fléchard caught an occasional glimpse of the interior. All the windows were open. Through those of the second story, which were very large, she could see cases along the walls, which seemed to her to be filled with books; and in front of one of the windows, lying on the floor in the shadow, she noticed a little group whose outline had no definite form; it lay in a heap, like a nest or brood of young birds, and from time to time she thought she saw it stir.

She watched it.

What could this little group of shadows be?

Sometimes she fancied it was composed of living forms. She was feverish and exhausted, for she had not eaten a mouthful since morning, had walked incessantly, and she felt as if she were the victim of some sort of hallucination which she instinctively mistrusted. But her eyes were now riveted upon this dark group of objects, whatsoever they might be; doubtless it was something inanimate lying there upon the floor in the hall directly over the conflagration.

Suddenly, as though inspired by a will of its own, the fire flung forth a jet of flame upon the dead ivy that mantled the very wall on which Michelle Fléchard stood gazing. It was as if it had just discovered this network of withered branches; a spark greedily seized upon it, and the fire began to rise from twig to twig with the frightful rapidity of a powder-train. In the twinkling of an eye the flame reached the second story, and from thence a light was thrown into the one below. A vivid glare brought into instantaneous relief three little sleeping children.

It was a charming group, their little legs and arms intertwined, their eyelids closed, their faces sweetly smiling.

The mother knew her children.

She uttered a terrible cry.

That cry of inexpressible anguish is given only to mothers. No sound can be more savage and yet pathetic. Uttered by a woman, it is like the cry of a she-wolf; and when one hears it from a wolf it might well come from a woman.

This cry of Michelle Fléchard was a howl. Hecuba howled, Homer tells us.

And this was the cry just heard by the Marquis de Lantenac.

We saw him pause to listen.

He was between the outlet of the passage through which Halmalo had guided him in his escape, and the ravine. Through the tangled wildwood about him he saw the burning bridge, and the Tourgue reddened by the reflection; he pushed aside the branches, and discovered on the opposite side, above his head, on the edge of the plateau, in front of the burning castle, and in the full light of the conflagration, the haggard and woful face of a woman bending over the ravine.

This face was no longer the face of Michelle Fléchard; it was a Medusa. There is something formidable in intense agony. This peasant woman had changed into one of the Eumenides. The unknown rustic, low, ignorant, stupid, had suddenly taken on the epic proportions of despair. Great sorrows expand the soul to gigantic proportions. This mother was the embodiment of maternity. A summary of humanity rises to the superhuman; she stood towering above the edge of the ravine, within sight of the conflagration, in presence of that crime like a power from beyond the grave. Moaning like a wild beast, she stood in the attitude of a goddess, with a countenance like a flaming mask, hurling forth imprecations. Nothing could have been more imperious than the lightning that flashed from those eyes drowned in tears; her look was like a thunderbolt hurled against the conflagration.

The Marquis listened. These reproaches fell upon his head; he heard her inarticulate, heart-rending cries, more like sobs than words: —

"My children, oh, my Lord! They are my children! Help! Fire! Fire! Fire! You must be brigands! Is there no one here? But my children will be burned to death! Such doings! Georgette! My children! Gros-Alain! René-Jean! What can this mean? Who put my children there? They are sleeping. I am mad! Oh, this is impossible! Help!"

Meanwhile, a great commotion was going on in the Tourgue and on the plateau. The whole camp had rushed to the fire, which had just broken out. The besiegers, after encountering the grape-shot, had now to struggle against the fire. Gauvain, Cimourdain, and Guéchamp were giving orders. What could be done? A few buckets of water might possibly be drawn from the slender stream in the ravine. The edge of the plateau was covered with terrified faces, gazing at the sight with ever-increasing distress; and it was an awful scene.

There they stood looking on, but none could lend a helping hand.

By way of the ivy the flames had risen to the upper story, and finding there a granary filled with straw had rushed upon it; and that entire granary was now on fire, the flames merrily dancing. A dreadful sight is the glee of a fire! It was like the breath of fiends fanning a funereal pile. One could fancy that the terrible Imânus was in person there, metamorphosed into a whirlwind of sparks, living in this cruel life of flame, and that his horrible soul had been transformed into a conflagration. The flames had not yet reached the library story; its lofty ceiling and massive walls had retarded the fatal moment that was now drawing near. The flames, like tongues of fire, darted upward from the story below; while the flames from above touched the stones, as if carressing them with the dread kiss of death. Beneath it lay a cave of lava, above an arch of fiery coals. Were the floor to cave in, all would be precipitated into a bed of red-hot ashes; were the ceiling to give way, they would be buried beneath the glowing coals. René-Jean, Gros-Alain, and Georgette had not yet waked; they were sleeping the sound and innocent sleep of childhood; and through the sheets of flame and smoke which now hid, now revealed the windows, they could be seen in this fiery grotto against a background of meteoric light, calm, graceful, and motionless, like three heavenly cherubs confidingly slumbering in hell. A tiger might have wept to see such blossoms in that furnace, – their cradles in the grave.

Meanwhile the mother wrung her hands: —

"Fire! Fire! I am crying fire! Are they all deaf, that no one comes? They arc burning up my children! Come, you men over yonder! To think of the days and days I have walked, and to find them like this! Fire! Help! They are angels, nothing short of angels! What have those innocents done? They shot me, and now they are burning them! Who does such things as these? Help! Save my children! Don't you hear me? If I were a dog, you would have pity on me! My children! They are asleep! Ah, Georgette, I see her dear little body! René-Jean! Gros-Alain! Those are their names. You can see well enough that I am their mother. Such abominable doings go on in these days! I have walked for days and nights. Why, I talked about them this very morning to a woman. Help! Help! Fire! They must be monsters! This is horrible! The oldest one is not five years old and the baby not two. I can see their little naked legs. They are asleep. Holy Virgin! Heaven gives them to me and Hell snatches them back again. Just think how far I have walked! The children that I fed with my milk, – I who felt so wretched because I couldn't find them! Have pity on me! I want my children; I must have them! And to think of them there in the fire! See my poor bleeding feet. Help! It cannot be that there are men on earth who would let those poor little creatures die like that! Help! Murder! Who ever saw the like? Ah, the brigands! What is that dreadful house? They stole them from me to murder them. Merciful Jesus! I want my children. Oh, I don't know what to do! They must not die! Help! Help! Help! Oh, I shall curse Heaven if they die like that!"

Simultaneously with the mother's entreaty other voices rang out on the plateau and the ravine.

"A ladder!"

"There is none."

"Water!"

"None to be had!"

"Up in the tower there, in the second story, there is a door."

"It is iron."

"Break it in!"

"Impossible."

Here the mother redoubled her desperate appeals.

"Fire! Help! Make haste, or kill me at once! My children! My children! Oh, that terrible fire! Throw me into the fire, but save their lives!"

In the intervals between her cries could be heard the constant crackling of the flames.

The Marquis felt in his pocket and his hand met the key to the iron door. Then stooping below the arch, through which he had just escaped, he re-entered the passage from which he had so lately emerged.

II

FROM THE DOOR OF STONE TO THAT OF IRON

A whole army driven half wild by its enforced inaction in the presence of danger; four thousand men unable to save three children, – such was the situation.

In point of fact, they had no ladder; the one sent from Javené had not arrived; the flames spread as from a yawning crater; it was simply absurd to attempt to extinguish them with the water from the half-dried brook in the ravine; one might as well empty a glass of water into a volcano.

Cimourdain, Guéchamp, and Radoub had gone down into the ravine. Gauvain had returned to the hall on the second story of the Tourgue, where the turning stone, the secret passage, and the iron door of the library were to be found; it was there that the sulphur match had been lighted by the Imânus, and there the fire had originated.

Gauvain had brought with him twenty sappers. Their last resource was to force open the iron door. Its fastenings were terribly strong.

They went at it with their axes, dealing violent blows. The axes broke. One of the sappers exclaimed, —

"Steel shivers like glass against that iron."

In fact, the door was composed of double sheets of wrought-iron bolted together, each sheet three inches thick.

Then they took iron bars and tried to pry the door open from below. The iron bars broke.

"One would think they were matches," said the sapper.

"Nothing less than a cannon-ball could open that door," muttered Gauvain, gloomily. "We should have to mount a field-piece up here."

"But even then – " replied the sapper.

For a moment they stood in despair, and their arms fell helpless by their sides. With a sense of defeat, these men stood in speechless dismay, gazing upon that door so awful in its immobility. They caught a glimpse of the red reflection from beneath it. Behind them, the fire was spreading.

The frightful body of the Imânus was there, dread victor that he was.

But a few minutes more, and the entire building might fall into ruins.

What could they do? The last ray of hope was gone.

Gauvain, whose eyes were riveted on the revolving stone and the opening through which the escape had been made, cried in the bitterness of his exasperation, —

"And yet the Marquis de Lantenac escaped through that door!"

"And returns," said a voice.

Against the stone setting of the secret passage appeared a white head.

It was the Marquis.

It was many a year since Gauvain had seen him so close at hand. He drew back.

Every man present stood as if petrified.

The Marquis held a large key in his hand; with one haughty glance he compelled the sappers who stood in his path to make way for him, walked at once to the iron door, stooped beneath the arch, and put the key into the lock.

It creaked in the lock, the door opened, they saw the fiery gulf; the Marquis entered it.

With head erect and steady step he strode forward. And those who looked on shuddered as their eyes followed his receding form.

He had barely taken a few steps in the burning hall, before the inlaid floor, undermined by the fire and shaken by his tread, gave way behind him, setting a chasm between him and the door. The Marquis pursued his way, never once turning his head, and vanished in the smoke.

Nothing more was seen.

Had he succeeded in making his way; or had another fiery chasm opened under his feet; or had he but ended his own life? No one could tell. A wall of smoke and flames rose before them. Whether dead or alive, the Marquis was on the other side.

III

WHERE THE SLEEPING CHILDREN WAKE

Meanwhile, the little ones had at last opened their eyes.

The fire, although it had not yet reached the library, cast a red reflection on the ceiling. It was not the kind of dawn the children knew. They were gazing at it, – Georgette utterly absorbed.

The conflagration showed forth all its glories; the black hydra and the scarlet dragon appeared amid the smoke-wreaths in all their sombre and vermilion hues. Great sparks shot out into the distance, lighting up the gloom like contending comets pursuing one another. Fire is a prodigal; its furnaces abound in jewels which they scatter to the winds; and it is to some purpose that charcoal is identical with the diamond. From the fissures opened in the wall of the third story, the embers were showering down into the ravine like cascades of jewels; the heaps of straw and oats burning in the granary began to pour in a stream through the windows like avalanches of gold-dust, – the oats changing to amethysts, and the straw to carbuncles.

"Pretty!" cried Georgette.

All three were now sitting up.

"Ah!" cried the mother, "they are awake!"

When René-Jean rose, then Gros-Alain rose also, and Georgette followed.

René-Jean stretched himself, and going towards the window, exclaimed, "I am hot!"

"Me hot!" repeated Georgette.

The mother called them.

"Children! René! Alain! Georgette!"

The children looked round. They were trying to find out what it all meant. Where men feel terrified, children are simply curious; he who is open to surprise is not easily alarmed; ignorance is closely allied to intrepidity. Children have so little claim upon hell, that were they to behold it, it would but excite their admiration.

The mother kept repeating, —

"René! Alain! Georgette!"

René-Jean turned; that voice roused him from his reverie. Children have short memories, but their recollections are swift; the entire past is for them but as yesterday. When René-Jean saw his mother, it seemed to him the most natural thing that could happen, surrounded as he was by strange things; and with a dim consciousness of needing support, he called, "Mamma!"

"Mamma!" said Gros-Alain.

"M'ma!" repeated Georgette.

And she stretched out her little arms.

The mother shrieked, "My children!"

The three children came to the window-ledge; fortunately, the conflagration was not on this side.

"I am too warm," said René-Jean; then added, "it burns"! and he looked for his mother.

"Why don't you come, mamma?" he said.

"Tum, m'ma," repeated Georgette.

The mother, with her hair streaming, torn and bleeding as she was, let herself roll from bush to bush, down into the ravine. There stood Cimourdain and Guéchamp, as powerless in their position as Gauvain was in his. The soldiers, in despair at their helplessness, were swarming around them. The heat would have seemed unbearable, had any one noticed it. They were discussing the escarpment of the bridge, the height of the arches and of the different stories, the inaccessible windows, and the necessity for speedy action. Three stories to climb, with no means of access. Radoub, wounded by a sabre-thrust in the shoulder, his ear lacerated, dripping with sweat and blood, had appeared upon the scene. He saw Michelle Fléchard.

"What have we here, – the woman who was shot come to life again?"

"My children!" cried the mother.

"You are right!" replied Radoub; "this is no time to inquire about ghosts." And he started to scale the bridge, – a useless attempt. He dug his nails into the stone, clung thus for a few seconds, but the smooth layers of stone offered neither cleft nor projection; they were as accurately fitted one upon the other as if the wall had just been built, and Radoub fell back. The fire was still increasing, terrible to behold. They could see the three fair heads framed in the window lighted by the glowing flames. Then Radoub shook his fist towards Heaven as though he beheld some one, and exclaimed, —

"Has Almighty God no mercy?"

The mother, kneeling, clasped her arms around one of the piers of the bridge, crying, "Mercy!"

The hollow sound of crashing timbers mingled with the crackling of the flames. The glass doors of the bookcases in the library cracked and fell with a crash. There could be no doubt that the woodwork was giving way. Human strength was of no avail. One moment, and the entire building would be swallowed up in the abyss. They were only waiting for the final catastrophe. The little voices could be heard repeating, "Mamma, mamma!" They were in paroxysms of terror.

Suddenly against the crimson background of the flames a tall figure came into view standing in the window next to the one where the children stood.

All heads were raised, all eyes were riveted upon the spot. A man up there, in the hall of the library, – a man in that furnace! His face looked black against the flames, but his hair was white. They recognized the Marquis de Lantenac.

He vanished, but only to appear again.

This appalling old man stood in the window, managing an enormous ladder. It was the escape-ladder, which had been lying along the library wall, and which he had dragged to the window. He seized one end of it, and with the masterly agility of an athlete he let it slip out of the window over the outer ledge down into the depths of the ravine. Radoub, standing below, wild with excitement, received the ladder in his outstretched arms, and clasping it to his breast, cried, —

"Long live the Republic!"

"Long live the King!" replied the Marquis.

"You may cry what you please," muttered Radoub, "and talk all the nonsense you like; you are a very angel of mercy."

The ladder was firmly planted, and communication thereby established between the burning hall and the ground. Twenty men, led by Radoub, rushed forward, and in the twinkling of an eye grouped themselves on the ladder from top to bottom, leaning back against the rungs, like masons carrying stones up and down, thus forming a human ladder over the wooden one. Radoub, standing on the uppermost rung, facing towards the fire, was just on a level with the window.

The little army, dispersed across the heath and along the slopes, overcome by contending emotions, hastened towards the plateau down into the ravine and up to the platform of the tower. Again they lost sight of the Marquis, but he reappeared, carrying a child in his arms.

The applause was tremendous.

He had caught up the first child that came within his reach, and it chanced to be Gros-Alain, who cried out, —

"I am frightened!"

The Marquis handed him to Radoub, who passed him on to a soldier standing just behind him, a little farther down, who in his turn delivered him to the next one; and while Gros-Alain, screaming with terror, was thus transferred from hand to hand until he reached the bottom of the ladder, the Marquis, disappearing for a moment, returned to the window with René-Jean, who, struggling and crying, slapped Radoub just as the Marquis handed him to the sergeant.