CHAPTER XXIV.
THE MILLENNIUM.
With that word he thrust me towards the door that led to the innerhall and the postern; and, knowing, as I did, that every moment Idelayed might stand for a life, and that within a minute or two atmost the rear of the building would be beset, and my chance of egresslost, 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 stoodalmost alone in the middle of the floor; in the attitude of onelistening and thinking, while a group of green ribbons, who seemed tobe the most determined of his followers, hung growling about thebarricaded door. Something in the gloomy brightness of the room, andthe disorder of the barricaded windows, something in the loneliness ofhis figure as he stood there, appealed to me; I even took one steptowards him. But at that moment he looked up, his face grown dark; andhe waved me off with a gesture almost of rage. I knew then that I hadbut a small part of his thoughts; and that at this moment, while theedifice he had built up with so much care and so much risk wascrumbling about him, he was thinking not of us, but of those who hadpromised and failed him; who had given good words, and left him toperish. And I went.
Yet even for that moment of delay it seemed that I might pay toodearly. A dozen steps brought me to the low-browed door he hadindicated, in the thickness of the wall at the foot of the mainstaircase. But already a man was adjusting the last bar. I cried tohim 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, thoughgrudgingly, and in half a minute we had the door loose. With a pistolin his hand, he opened it on the chain and looked out. It opened on anarrow passage--which, God be thanked, was still empty. He dropped thechain, and almost thrust me out, cried, "To the left!" and then, asdazzled by the sunlight I turned that way, I heard the door slambehind me and the chain rattle as it was linked again.
The houses that rose on each side somewhat deadened the noise of themob and the firing; but as I hurried down the alley, bareheaded andwith 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 assailantshad entered the passage by the farther end; and that had I waited amoment longer I should have been too late.
As it was, my position was sufficiently forlorn, if it was nothopeless. Alone and a stranger, without hat or badge, knowing littleof the streets, I might blunder at any corner into the arms of one ofthe parties--and be massacred. I had a notion that the church of theCapuchins was that which I had visited near Madame Catinot's; and myfirst thought was to gain the main street leading in that direction.This was not so easy, however; the alley in which I found myself ledonly into a second passage equally strait and gloomy. Entering this, Iturned after a moment's hesitation to the left, but before I had gonea dozen paces I heard shouting in front of me; and I halted andretraced my steps. Hurrying in the other direction, I found myself ina minute in a little gloomy well-like court, with no second outletthat I could see, where I stood a moment panting and at a loss,rendered frantic and almost desperate by the thought that, while Ihovered there uncertain, the die might be cast, and those whom Isought perish for lack of my aid.
I was about to return, resolved to face at all risks the party ofrioters whom I heard behind me, when an open window in the lowestfloor 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 housemust have an outlet on the street. In a dozen strides I crossed thecourt, and resting one hand on the sill of the window, vaulted intothe 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 myears, and a woman, a girl, cowering from me, white-faced, her back tothe door. She had been kneeling, praying probably, by the bed; and Ihad almost fallen on her. When I looked she screamed again; I calledto 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 staredat 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 gaveher sense again. She opened the door beside her, and pointed dumblydown a passage. I hurried through the passage, rejoicing at mysuccess, but before I could unbar the door that I found facing me asecond woman came out of a room at the side, and saw me, and threw upher 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!" shegasped. "And then to the right! Are they coming?"
I did not stay to ask whom she meant, but getting the door open atlast 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 eyesmet the woman's, and without a word she snatched up the bar I haddropped and set it in the sockets. Then she turned and ran up thestairs, and I followed her, the girl into whose room I had leapt, andwhose 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 lookedout, standing back and peering fearfully over the sill. No need, now,to ask why I had returned so quickly. The roar of many voices seemedin a moment to fill all the street, while the casement shook with thetread of thousands and thousands of advancing feet, as, rank afterrank, stretching from wall to wall, the mob, or one section of it,swept by, the foremost marching in order, shoulder to shoulder, armedwith muskets, and in some kind of uniform, the rearmost a savagerabble with naked arms and pikes and axes, who looked up at thewindows, and shook their fists and danced and leapt as they went by,with a great shout of "_Aux Arenes! Aux Arenes!_"
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 meclutched my arm and screamed aloud. On six long pikes, raised highabove the mob, moved six severed heads--one, the foremost, bald andlarge, and hideously leering. They lifted these to the windows, andshook their gory locks in sport; and so went by, and in a moment thestreet was quiet again.
The woman, trembling in a chair, muttered that they had sackedLa Vierge, the red cabaret, and that the bald head was atown-councillor's, her neighbour's. But I did not stay to listen. Ileft her where she was, and, hurrying down again, unbarred the doorand went out. All was strangely quiet again. The morning sun shonebright and warm on the long empty street, and seemed to give the lieto the thing I had seen. Not a living creature was visible this way orthat; not a face at the window. I stood a moment in the middle of theroad, disconcerted; puzzled by the bright stillness, and uncertainwhich way I had been going. At last I remembered the woman'sdirections, and set off on the heels of the mob, until I reached thefirst turning on the right. I took this, and had not gone a hundredyards before I recognised, a little in front of me, Madame Catinot'shouse.
It showed to the sunshine a wide blind front, long rows of shutteredwindows, and not a sign of life. Nevertheless, here was something Iknew, something which wore a semblance of familiarity, and I hailed itwith hope; and, flinging myself on the door, knocked long andrecklessly. The noise seemed fit to wake the dead; it boomed andechoed in every doorway of the empty street, that on the evening of myarrival had teemed with traffic; I shivered at the sound--I shiveredstanding conspicuous on the steps of the house, expecting a score ofwindows to be opened and heads thrust out.
But I had not yet learned how the extremity of panic benumbs; or howstrong is the cowardly instinct that binds the peaceful man to hishearth when blood flows in the streets. Not a face showed at acasement, not a door opened; worse, though I knocked again and aga
in,the house I would awaken remained dead and silent. I stood back andgazed at it, and returned, and hammered again, thinking this timenothing of myself.
But without result. Or not quite. Far away at the end of the streetthe 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 therear 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 nearerand louder, but now I could see the low door of the church, and Islackened my pace a little. As I did so the door before me opened, anda man looked out. I saw his face before he saw me, and read it; sawterror, shame, and rage written on its mean features; and in somestrange way I knew what he was going to do before he did it. A momenthe glared abroad, blinking and shading his eyes in the sunshine, thenhe 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 toface with a sight I shall remember while I live; for that which waspassing outside, that which I had seen during the last few minutes,gave it a solemnity exceeding even that of the strange service I hadwitnessed there before.
The sun shut out, a few red altar lamps shed a sombre light on thepillars and the dim pictures and the vanishing spaces; above all, on avast crowd of kneeling women, whose bowed heads and wailing voices asthey chanted the Litany of the Virgin, filled the nave.
There were some, principally on the fringe of the assembly, who rockedthemselves to and fro, weeping silently, or lay still as statues withtheir foreheads pressed to the cold stones; whilst others glanced thisway and that with staring eyes, and started at the slightest sound,and moaned prayers with white lips. But more and more, the passionateutterance of the braver souls laid bonds on the others; louder andlouder the measured rhythm of "_Ora pro nobis! Ora pro nobis!_" roseand swelled through the vaults of the roof; more and more fervent itgrew, more and more importunate, wilder the abandonment ofsupplication, until--until I felt the tears rise in my throat, and mybreast swell with pity and admiration--and then I saw Denise.
She knelt between her mother and Madame Catinot, nearly in the frontrow of those who faced the high altar. Whence I stood, I had a sideview of her face as she looked upward in rapt adoration--that facewhich I had once deemed so childish. Now at the thought that sheprayed, perhaps for me--at the thought that this woman so pure andbrave, that though little more than a child, and soft, and gentle, andmaidenly, she could bear herself with no shadow of quailing in thisstress 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 mybreast 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 athunderous shock, followed by a shower of blows and loud cries foradmittance.
A horrible kind of shudder ran through the kneeling crowd, and hereand there a woman screamed and sprang up and looked wildly round. Butfor a few moments the chant still rose monotonously and filled thebuilding; louder and louder the measured rhythm of "_Ora pro nobis!Ora pro nobis!_" still rose and fell and rose again with an intensityof supplication, a pathos of repetition that told of bursting hearts.At length, however, one of the leaves of the door flew open, and thatproved too much; the sound sent three parts of the congregationshrieking to their feet--though a few still sang. By this time I washalf way through the crowd, pressing to Denise's side; before I couldreach her the other door gave way, and a dozen men flocked intumultuously. I had a glimpse of a priest--afterwards I learnt that itwas Father Benoit--standing to oppose them with a cross upraised; andthen, by the dim light, which to them was darkness, I saw--unspeakablerelief--that the intruders were not the leaders of the mob, butforemost the two St. Alais, blood-stained and black with powder, withdrawn swords and clothes torn; and behind them a score of theirfollowers.
In their relief women flung themselves on the men's necks, and thosewho stood farther away burst into loud sobbing and weeping. But themen themselves, after securing the doors behind them, beganimmediately to move across the church to the smaller exit on thealley; one crying that all was lost, and another that the east gatewas open, while a third adjured the women to separate--adding that inthe neighbouring houses they would be safe, but that the church wouldbe sacked; and that even now the Calvinists were bursting in the gatesof the monastery through which the fugitives had retreated, afterbeing driven out of the Arenes.
All, on the instant, was panic and wailing and confusion. I have heardit said since that the worst thing the men could have done was to takethe church in their flight, and that had they kept aloof the womenwould not have been disturbed; that, as a fact, and in the event, thechurch was not sacked. But in such a hell as was Nimes that morning,with the kennels running blood, and men's souls surprised by suddendefeat, 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 littlefarther from Denise; but as she and the group round her held back andlet 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 Itouched her arm did not see me. Then, without a word, she clung tome--she clung to me, looking up; I saw her face under the hood, and itwas happy. God! It was happy, even in that scene of terror!
After that, Madame St. Alais, though she greeted me with a bittersmile, had no power to repel me. "You are quick, Monsieur, to profitby your victory," she said, in a scathing tone. And that was all.Unrebuked, I passed my arm round Denise, and followed close on Louisand Madame Catinot; while Monsieur le Marquis, after speaking with hismother, 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 usleave the table!"
She dropped her hood over her face; and even in that moment of fearand excitement I found something tragic in the act, and on a suddenpitied her. But it was no time for sentiment or pity; the pursuerswere not far behind the pursued. We were still in the church and somepaces from the threshold giving on the alley, when a rush of footstepsoutside the great door behind us made itself heard, and the nextinstant the doors creaked under the blows hailed upon them. It was aquestion whether they would stand until we were out, and I felt theslender figure within my arm quiver and press more closely to me. Butthey held--they held, and an instant later the crowd before us gaveway, and we were outside in the daylight, in the alley, hurryingquickly down it towards Madame Catinot's house.
It seemed to me that we were safe then, or nearly safe; so glad was Ito find myself in the open air and out of the church. The ground fellaway a little towards Madame Catinot's, and I could see the line ofhastening heads bobbing along before us, and here and there whitefaces turned to look back. The high walls on either hand softened thenoise of the riot. Behind me were M. le Marquis and Madame; and againbehind them three or four of M. le Marquis' followers brought up therear. I looked back beyond these and saw that the alley opposite thechurch was still clear, and that the pursuers had not yet passedthrough the church; and I stooped to whisper a word of comfort toDenise. I stooped perhaps longer than was necessary, for before I wasaware of it I found myself stumbling over Louis' heels. A backwardwave sweeping up the alley had brought him up short and flung himagainst me. With the movement, as we all jostled one another, therearose far in front and rolled up the passage between the high walls asound of misery; a mingling of groans and screams and wailing such asI hope I may never hear again. Some strove furiously to push their wayback towards the church, and some, not understanding what was amiss,to go forwards, and some fell, and were trodden under foot; and for afew seconds the long narrow alley heaved and seethed in an agony ofpanic.
Engaged in saving Denise from the crush and keeping her on her feet, Idid not, for a moment, understand. The first
thought I had was thatthe women--three out of four were women--had gone mad or given way toa shameful, selfish terror. Then, as our company staggering andscreaming rolled back upon us, until it filled but half the length ofthe passage, I heard in front a roar of cruel laughter, and saw overthe intervening heads a serried mass of pike-points filling the end ofthe passage opposite Madame Catinot's house. Then I understood. TheCalvinists had cut us off; and my heart stood still.
For there was no retreat. I looked behind me, and saw the alley by thechurch-porch choked with men who had reached it through the church;alive with harsh mocking faces, and scowling eyes, and cruel thirstypikes. We were hemmed in; in the long high walls, which it wasimpossible to scale, was no door or outlet short of Madame Catinot'shouse--and that was guarded. And before and behind us were the pikes.
I dream of that scene sometimes; of the sunshine, hot and bright, thatlay ghastly on white faces distorted with fear; of women fallen ontheir knees and lifting hands this way and that; of others screamingand uttering frenzied prayers, or hanging on men's necks; of the longwrithing line of humanity, wherein fear, showing itself in everyshape, had its way; above all of the fiendish jeers and laughter ofthe victors, as they cried to the men to step out, or hurled vilewords at the women.
Even Nimes, mother of factions, parent of a hundred quarterlessbrawls, never saw a worse scene, or one more devilish. For a fewseconds in the surprise of this trap, in the sudden horror of findingourselves, when all seemed well, at grips with death, I could onlyclutch Denise to me tighter and tighter, and hide her eyes on mybreast, as I leaned against the wall and groaned with white lips. OGod, I thought, the women! The women! At such a time a man would giveall the world that there might be none, or that he had never lovedone.
St. Alais was the first to recover his presence of mind and act--ifthat could be called action which was no more than speech, since wewere hopelessly enmeshed and outnumbered. Putting Madame behind him hewaved a white kerchief to the men by the door of the church--who stoodabout 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 Pretre!" 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 basles traitres! A bas les pretres!_ Stand out! Stand out, Messieurs!"they continued, "or we will come and pluck you from the women'sskirts!"
He glowered at them in unspeakable rage. Then a man on their sidestepped out and stilled the tumult. "Now listen!" said this fellow, agiant, with long black hair falling over a tallowy face. "We will giveyou 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 onyour heads."
St. Alais stood speechless. At last, "You are fiends!" he cried in avoice of horror. "Would you kill us before their eyes?"
"Ay, or in their laps!" the man retorted, amid a roar of laughter. "Sodecide, decide!" he continued, dancing a clumsy step and tossing ahalf-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 triedto speak. But his voice failed.
And then, of what happened next I cannot tell; for, for a minute, allwas blurred. I remember only how the sun lay hot on the wall beyondhis face, and how black the lines of mortar showed between the oldthin Roman bricks. We were about twenty men and perhaps fifty women,huddled together in a space some forty yards long. Groans burst fromthe men's lips, and such as had women in their arms--and they weremany--leaned against the wall and tried to comfort them, and tried toput them from them. One man cried curses on the dogs who would murderus, and shook his fists at them; and some rained kisses on the palesenseless faces that lay on their breasts--for, thank God, many of thewomen had fainted; while others, like St. Alais, looked mute agonyinto eyes that told it again, or clasped a neighbour's hand, andlooked up into a sky piteously blue and bright. And I--I do not knowwhat I did, save look into Denise's eyes and look and look! There wasno senselessness in them.
Remember that the sun shone on all this, and the birds twittered andchirped in the gardens beyond the walls; that it wanted an hour or twoof high noon, a southern noon; that in the crease of the valley theRhone sparkled between its banks, and not far off the sea brokerippling and creaming on the shore of Les Bouches; that all naturerejoiced, and only we--we, pent between those dreadful walls, thosescowling faces, saw death imminent--black death shutting out allthings.
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 hissister's speechless misery moved him--he had another thought. As theblack-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 isone man here who is not of us! Let him pass first, and go!" And hepointed 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 meis against me!" the giant quoted impiously. And they jeered again.
On that, I take no credit for what I did. In such moments ofexaltation men are not accountable, and, for another thing, I knewthat they would not listen, that I risked nothing. And trembling withrage I flung back their words. "I am against you!" I cried. "I wouldrather 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 meand rushed on the pike-points. Half a dozen met in his breast beforeour eyes--before our eyes--and with a wild scream he flung up his armsand was borne back against the side-wall dead and gushing blood.
Instinctively I had covered Denise's face that she might not see. Andit was well; for at that--there was a kind of mercy in it, and let metell it quickly--the wretches tasting blood broke loose, and rushed onus. I saw St. Alais thrust his mother behind him, and almost with thesame movement fling himself on the pikes; and I, pushing Denise downinto the angle of the wall--though she clung to me and prayed tome--killed the first that came at me with Froment's pistol, and thenext also, with the other barrel at point blank distance--feeling nofear, but only passion and rage. The third bore me down with his pikefixed in my shoulder, and for a moment I saw only the sky, and hisscowling face black against it; and shut my eyes, expecting the blowthat must follow.
But none did follow. Instead a weight fell on me, and I began tostruggle, and a whole battle, it seemed to me, was fought over me--inthat horrible slaughterhouse alley, where they dragged men fromwomen's arms, and forced them, screaming, to the wall, and stabbedthem to death without pity; and things were done of which I dare nottell!