CHAPTER LXI.

THEY THREE MEET AGAIN.

Well might Marguerite Gosner cry to her God for help; for with the force of a whirlwind she was swept back toward the draw-bridge and in danger of being trampled to death. Her plaintive cry for the mother she had lost, was answered by a rude hand which grasped her by the shoulder.

“Ha! I have reached you at last,” hissed the fierce voice of a woman in her ear. “Citizens, here is the daughter of old Doudel, who has been twenty years torturing prisoners in this accursed pile. Which of you want a dainty morsel for his hatchet? Take her while I pick off the old fox. I see him on the ramparts now.”

With a powerful swing of her arms, Louison Brisot hurled the helpless creature back upon a group of young men who followed her like a pack of fiends, shrieking and howling as they went.

As she fell at their feet, the woman who had flung her there, snatched a musket from the nearest insurgent, and leveled it at Doudel, who was steadily pacing the ramparts up and down, as if no work of death were going on beneath him.

“Oh, my God, spare him, spare him,” cried Marguerite, struggling against the rude hands that had lifted her from the earth.

A young man heard her cry, and knew the voice. With the bound of a panther, he sprang upon Louison Brisot and dashed down the musket, with which she was coolly taking aim. Then he turned, and tore Marguerite from the ruffians that held her.

“Are you men, or brutes?” he thundered, dashing the foremost back with his disengaged hand. “When women turn fiends, can Frenchmen be found to do their evil work.”

The sharp crack of a rifle mingled with these indignant words. Down from the nearest tower a human form plunged headlong, and fell in an awful heap at Louison’s feet. The woman coolly returned the musket that had done this fearful work, and strode up to the young man who had so bravely attempted to prevent it.

“The women of France can do their own work, Monsieur St. Just, and by the looks of that white face, I should say that my shot had killed two birds.”

St. Just looked down upon the deathly face on his bosom and, in his terror at its whiteness, forgot the fiendish laugh of the woman whom he believed to have killed an innocent girl. Gathering the lifeless form in his arms, he carried it across the thronged draw-bridge, and finding an empty bench in the Cour de Gouvernment, laid her upon it.

There seemed no hope of getting restoratives in that fearful place, which was still crowded with the mob, and dark with rolling smoke. But as St. Just laid his burden down, a man came reeling up from the cellars of the governor’s dwelling, which the fire had not reached, carrying a bottle of wine in his hand, which he flung about ferociously. St. Just caught this man by the arm.

“Citoyen, give me some of the wine, here is a poor girl dying for want of it.”

“Is she one of us?” answered the man.

“Yes, yes.”

The ruffian glanced at Marguerite’s humble garments, and was satisfied.

“Oh, yes, I see; too young for the work. There, citoyen. What is your name?”

“St. Just.”

“Long live Citoyen St. Just! Down with the Bastille!” shouted the man, striking the neck of his bottle against the stone bench, and giving it, all dripping with red wine, to St. Just.

“It is some of the governor’s Burgundy; don’t fear to use it. He will never want it, our people over yonder have taken care of that.”

“Dead, great Heavens! they have not murdered him,” exclaimed St. Just, filled with new horror. “We promised him safe conduct.”

“It seems our friends thought better of it. I saw him half an hour ago on his way to the Hôtel de Ville. He was bareheaded then, and looked brave enough, with all our people hooting at him. Hullin was at his side, and did his best to quiet our patriots; but somehow, his foot stumbled, and when he got up again, Delaunay’s head was on a pike, dancing over the crowd.”

“It was a dastardly act, treacherous to him and to us,” said St. Just sternly.

“For my part, I think the fellow fought bravely enough for his life to have kept it,” said the man. “But Down with the Bastille! Down with the enemies of France! I will get another bottle of his wine; keep that, citoyen; the girl needs it more than I do, especially as I can get more. Take some yourself. It will bring the color back to your face, which looks like a ghost through the smoke. Bah! it stifles one.”

St. Just did indeed look pale, and his hand trembled, as he held the wine to Marguerite’s lips. They did not move, and he was compelled to force the wine between them. Still, she did not stir. These two persons were quite alone in the crowd now. No one observed them, no one cared whether the girl lived or died. St. Just bent over her, greatly troubled. His breath bathed her cheek, his hand pressed hers, his voice of agony pursued her sleeping spirit.

“Marguerite—Marguerite, for Heaven’s sake, for my sake, open your eyes. Do you wish me to die, Marguerite? One word—one look—one breath, only let me know that you are alive.”

His voice reached the girl’s soul, wherever it was. Her eyelids began to tremble, her lips parted and grew red with a soft, gradual color.

“Marguerite, my Marguerite!”

“I hear, I am coming,” murmured the girl; “oh my beloved, I hear you.”

But for the crowd St. Just would have fallen down upon his knees and wept over her such tears as men like him alone can shed. For the first time, in that half unconscious state, she had confessed her love for him.

Marguerite came to herself at last, and opening her great, dreamy eyes, answered back the smile that glowed on St. Just’s face.

“I knew, I felt sure of it,” she said, quite unconscious that any words had escaped her lips before. “When I come out of my dreams that face is always near, but it fades away.”

All at once the girl was aroused out of her dreamy weakness—a new gang of insurgents swept by the bench where she lay, shouting, howling, and brandishing their pikes in the air.

Marguerite started up wildly.

“What is that?”

“A fresh outburst of the crowd, Marguerite, but have no fear, you are safe.”

“Safe! oh yes,” she answered, and a soft smile stole over her face; but, all at once she started up.

“My mother, my mother! oh, how could I forget her! Who will say that she is safe?”

“I will, Marguerite. Look yonder.”

Marguerite sat up on the bench, and saw her mother with Monsieur Jacques; between them, half walking, was an old man, who strove to hide his face from the light.

“It is my father,” she said, almost in a whisper. “He has not seen the light since I was a little child.”

St. Just went forward, and supported the prisoner toward the bench where Marguerite rested. Madame Gosner came forward sadly, and took the girl in her arms.

“It is your father, Marguerite; but he does not know me. They have killed his mind.”

Marguerite took her mother’s hand, and kissed it tenderly.

“He will remember, mamma. God never can kill so sweet a thing as love in the human soul. Oh yes, he will remember.”

Marguerite saw that her father was drawing near, and the tremor of a great expectation shook her frame; her eyes grew misty, and the faintness again crept over her, as she turned them upon him.

The bench on which Marguerite sat was in the deep shadow of a wall. She saw the wind blow that white hair back from the old man’s face, which had been covered till then. It was the most benign and gentle face that human eyes ever looked upon. She left the bench and moved timidly toward that angel-faced man, who held back his hair with both hands, that he might look upon her. She sunk to her knees at his feet, for great suffering had made him sacred to her. A single holy word trembled on her lips.

“Father!”

A look of touching bewilderment came over that gentle face; the prisoner looked from the beautiful girl at his feet to the face of the mother.

“This is Therese,” he said.

“This is your child,” said madame, keeping back her tears. “She was a little thing when you went away.”

“A—yes—I remember! So small—so small! But this one—— This is Therese!”

“Father, will you not speak one word to me?”

“One word? There was something I used to do;” he seemed troubled with thought a moment, then bent down and laid his hand on her head, “God—God bless them!”

He turned his pleased face upon his wife.

“These words I kept close—here, here!”

While his hand was on Marguerite’s head a great tumult came surging through the court. Some women, driven frantic by continued resistance at a second draw-bridge, had gone in a body to the Place de Grève, from whence they dragged another cannon and were now wheeling it furiously onward, determined on firing it themselves in rebuke of the men who, more patient and less ferocious than they, had waited to negotiate.

When they saw the draw-bridge down and their fellow insurgents swarming over the prison, a yell of triumph rent the smoky air and, rushing forward, they met Louison Brisot surrounded by a mob of blackened ruffians, who bore the keeper Doudel’s head upon a pike.

Through all the fiendish noise that followed this horrible encounter, one shrill cry pierced like an arrow, and a little old woman, who had anxiously followed the fiendish gang rather than join it, fell lifeless on the pavement.

It was Dame Doudel, the murdered man’s widow.

“Take her up and carry her home,” cried Louison Brisot. “One man is not much to give to France, besides, her’s was a traitor.”

For one dread moment there was silence in the crowd. Those women were not all fiends, and Dame Doudel was popular among them. Deep and bitter murmurs rose up against Louison. The crowd was ready to turn and rend her where she stood.

The woman, who was audacious, but hardly brave, saw her danger and trembled; but a flash of courage saved her.

“Behold, there stands the prisoner Gosner. Women of France, it was I that set him free. Let us bear him home in triumph.”

Murmurs of rage were now turned to a wild shout of approval. Those mad women swarmed around the prisoner and his family. They recognized Madame Gosner, and smothered her with hot kisses from lips that tasted of gunpowder. They lifted that poor old man to the cannon brought for another purpose, and prepared to drag him through the streets of Paris as a proof of their victory.

Madame Gosner clung to her husband till fragments of his tattered garments were torn off and left in her hand.

“Mount, mount!” cried the women, poising her upon the cannon, where she threw both arms around her husband and kept him from falling.

Louison Brisot snatched a red cap from the head of an insurgent, and throwing it over the white locks of the prisoner, flung herself across one end of the gun, astride, as if she had been mounting a war charger.

“On, on!” she shouted, tearing the flame-colored scarf from her shoulders, and streaming it through the circling smoke. “Let the people of Paris see how the king deals with them!”

A hundred hands, grim with dust, blackened with powder, quivering and eager as the claws of hungry vultures, seized upon the rope and hurled the cannon forward. The crowd was torn apart, or trampled down. Thunders of applause followed this army of women, which was engulfed in the black masses of the streets, as a stormy ocean swallows up the ships tossing on its waves.

Marguerite Gosner saw both father and mother thus forcibly swept away without the power to speak, and found herself quite alone with Monsieur Jacques and St. Just.

“Oh, take me home,” she pleaded, reaching forth her arms to the younger man, “it is terrible, I shall die!”

St. Just gathered her close to his side, forgetful of the other presence, and bent his face to hers.

“Have no fear, my beloved. Am I not with you!”

Jacques heard these words, and saw the glance of tender gratitude which shone from those uplifted eyes. Saw it, and the great heart in his bosom gave one leap and was still, like an eagle shot through the breast.

“Oh, take me, take me with you,” pleaded an old voice, quivering with pathetic pain. “Let me go with you, Marguerite, for I have no one else in the world now.”

It was Dame Doudel, who had come out of her fainting fit, and crept toward the only faces she knew.

“Take care of her, she needs help more than I do,” said the girl, withdrawing herself from the arm that supported her.

“I will do that.”

Monsieur Jacques’ voice was harsh with agony as he said this, but he saw Marguerite draw back to that beloved shelter, and gave no other sign of the war within him.