And now the crowd came pouring into the château. Pierre had been made to open the gate, and they all rushed up the marble staircase. They invaded the hall and the vast reception rooms. Awed at first by so much magnificence of which they had no conception, by the gliding and the crystals and the damask chairs, and by the mirrors which reflected their dark faces and their rags and made their numbers seem so much greater than they were.

But the awe soon wore off. So much magnificence! And there were the Louvet children homeless; and Marianne Vallon lay dead in her ruined home.

"Well, André!" one of the men asked. "What says the aristo?"

"Not much to say, I imagine," said another.

"I am for slitting his throat at once and have done with him." This from Tarbot, the ex-butcher, who always kept a knife in his belt.

"I prefer the guillotine," declared Molé sententiously. "It's more effective. An example to others, what?"

"Let's hear what he's got to say first, and then we'll see."

De Marigny's fine white hand felt in his pocket and drew out a lace-bordered handkerchief, which he raised to his nose. With a rough gesture André tore it out of his hand.

"Play-acting, Marigny!" he said with a sneer.

"Let me slit his throat, André!" Tarbot demanded.

"Murder, by all means," De Marigny retorted coolly.

"Murder? No," André declared. "I too am for the guillotine. The people want to see you die a dog's death. Murder? Bah! Will one moment's anguish in your miserable life give us back our youth spent in toiling so that you might feast; gives us back our health impaired by starvation while you ate and drank your fill? The last drain of your life's blood, Marigny, cannot make good your tyranny. It cannot! It cannot! You cannot make good, for you have nothing now - no power, no riches, none of the claptrap that made you think you were a creature apart while we were just swine."

His words acted like a gust of wind on a smouldering flame. Some were for immediate murder, others like the thought of the more protracted agony of the guillotine, but all wanted this man's death. They hungered for it. They ached for a sight of his blood. There was not a man or a woman there who did not see that pale, proud face through a veil of crimson. But they still help their breath like wild beasts when they have sighted their prey and are ready to spring. Like felines they were, licking their jaws, enjoying to its full the sublime sense of power over the life and death of a fellow man.

"Strike him, André!" one of the men shouted. "I am for instant death."

"Remember your mother, André!" yelled another. "Why wait for the guillotine."

And suddenly the door behind De Marigny flew open, and Aurore rushed in, a vision pale and ethereal, with fair hair loose and eyes as dark as the midnight sky in June. In an instant she was beside her father, her arms were round him, her head was against his breast. Her slendor body was a shield between him and his enemies.

André had uttered one loud, savage oath, and then remained dumb, staring at the girl, while the crowd, taken aback for a few seconds, soon began to laugh and jeer. A fresh spectacle this: this fine lady with her laces and her frills. The wolves in expectation of the slaughtered sheep rejoiced at sight of the lamb.

"For God's sake, Aurore, go back!" Monseigneur exclaimed. At first he had been half dazed, hardly believed his eyes when he saw Aurore. He was like a man in a trance, not fully wakened from a dream. "Monsieur l'Abbé, take her away!" he added, vainly trying to perceive the Curé's face in the midst of the crowd. He himself did what he could to drag Aurore's arms away from his shoulders, whilst the old priest made a vain effort to reach her. But all this was of no avail. It was Molé, the wheelwright, who seized hold of Aurore by the waist and dragged her away from her father. In a moment she was surrounded. The women in the forefront pulled at her gown and tore at the lace of her sleeve.

"How much did your gown cost, my cabbage?" one of them jeered.

"As much as would keep a family in food for a year," declared another.

"Strip it off," suggested one of the men with a coarse laugh.

One of the women grabbed at her fichu; another tugged at the ribbon in her hair; the older ones lifted her dress and pulled at the lace petticoats, the dainty stockings and silk garters. Obscene jests went round:

"Strip off her clothes!" called Legendre, the young imp with the game leg.

"Pigs! Curs! Let her go!" De Marigny cried at the top of his voice, and tried to reach his daughter, but the whole crowd was in the way, laughing and jeering, pressing round the girl with shouts of derision and of glee. They elbowed De Marigny out of the way. One of the men struck him on the face with his fist, and he fell bleeding to the ground. He tried to drag himself up again until another man kicked him and he lost consciousness.

Aurore gave an agonized cry of horror, the first she had uttered since she had faced the crowd. Wildly, like a young animal at bay, she looked about her, and her eyes met those of André Vallon.

He as outside the crowd, had stood there ever since she first came into the room, vaguely retracing in his mind the childish features of ten years ago in that lovely face, contorted with fear. With a mechanical movement his hand went up to his breast, where all those years ago her head had rested for one brief moment, on the very spot where they empty sleeve was now attached. Her soft fair hair had tickled his cheeks; the scent of violets and roses had risen to his nostrils. He had been in a dream until the rough blow on his face from the hand of an insolent fop had awakened him and kept him awake all those years with the memory of a crowning insult.

He had been in a dream then; he was in a dream now, until her eyes met his. Then suddenly he pushed his way through the crowd. With his one arm he seized Aurore round the waist and lifted her off her feet.

"The wench is mine!" he called aloud.

Holding her closely to him, he pushed his way back as far as the door of the boudoir to the accompaniment of vociferous shouts and laughter from the astonished crowd. Here was a novel spectacle, forsooth!

"He was always a madcap, that André!" the women declared, while laughter brought tears to their eyes. Laughter, perhaps, or something a little softer, more gentle: a vague sense of romance never quite absent from the hearts of a Latin race.

André had allowed the girl to slide out of the shelter of his arm. She collapsed on the floor right against the door like a pathetic bundle of laces and frills. She was not quite conscious. Terror and horror combined had obscured her senses. With her small trembling hands she grasped the corner of a console as she slid down on her knees, and through her bloodless lips came pitiful moans and whispered murmurs, "Father! My father!"

André stood guard over her like a desert beast over its prey. He stood, tall and erect, with head thrown back and legs wide apart, a vivid presentment of the conquering male. The crowd was certainly amused. Some of them tried to push forward to peer once again closely at the aristo, her silks and her laces, but André with his stentorian voice kept them all at bay.

"Hands off! The wench is mine!"

"What will you do with her, André?" a voice called laughing out of the crowd.

"Take her for wife, pardi," André retorted. "I must have someone to wash and cook for me. The wench pleases me. She's mine!"

This sally was greeted with a wealth of coarse jests from the men, but the women were all on the side of André. They liked his looks, his flashing eyes, darker than ever in his pale, determined face. They liked his full red lips which showed a glimmer of white teeth like those of a young cat.

"Let him be, he was always a madcap!"

"If he wants the wench, why shouldn't he have her?"

And whisperings went the round: stories of André Vallon's pranks before he left the village to seek fortune in Paris. Not a boy for leagues around he had not licked, not a pretty girl whom he had not kissed.

"Let him have her if he wants her."

The men agreed. Even Tarbot, whose lust for killing had a few moments ago turned him into a savage brute, shrugged his wide shoulders and said coolly with a coarse jest:

"Better than the guillotine, anyway!"

One of the men who had worked at the maire in Nevers added sententiously:

"If he likes to take her for wife there would be no guillotine for her."

"Is that so?" the others asked.

"The new law," the man from Nevers declared curtly. "A patriot may save an aristo from the guillotine if he chooses to marry her."

They discussed this matter from several points of view. Those big-wigs up in Paris were always framing new laws, but this was not a bad one. France was in need of children. The men, at any rate, were all in its favour beacause, forsooth, they were well-favoured, those aristos - soft skins, fluffy hair, better nourished than the poor village wenches. The women, on the other hand, liked the romance of it, especially if the patriot was young and handsome, like André Vallon.

André himself listened to all the comments and the murmurings with a vague smile on his lips. Perhaps he only half heard what was said. His glance more often than not wandered round to that motionless figure, crouching against the door, and when a pitiful moan came to his ears, a look almost of ferocity flashed out of his eyes.

The priest had contrived to get near to Aurore. He stooped and put his hand on her shoulder. He whispered comforting words to her, but the only response she gave was a pathetic murmur: "My father? Where is he?"

André, at sight of the priest, had become more and more impatient, and suddenly, like a man who has come to the end of his tether, he turned and kicked open the door. the small withdrawing room beyond was in semidarkness. Jeannette was in there, squatting on a low stool, weeping into her apron which covered her face. There was a book on the floor, an open workbox, a piece of embroidery on the table with a thimble and scissors beside it. The room looked cozy in the half light with all these little intimacies. André glanced into it, then down on the crouching figure at his feet. God in heaven! how he hated it all! The beauty, the cosiness, and the perfume as of a bouquet of flowers that seemed to dull his senses!

"Stop your mumblings," he said roughly to the priest, "and take her in there."

Aurore wouldn't move, though she looked up for a moment when she heard the door open behind her. Not seeing her father, she turned on André.

"My father!" she demanded.

He took her by the wrist and dragged her roughly into the boudoir.

"I'll look after your father," he said curtly. "He's safe enough for the moment."

The Abbé Rosemonde slipped in after them and closed the door. Strangely enough, the crowd did not attempt to follow. They stood outside jeering and sniggering, vastly amused at the turn of events. So unexpected this romance of the aristo and that madcap André! It might turn to tragedy, some of them thought, but even so, it was better than the guillotine.

Some of the men gazed down on De Marigny lying unconscious in a corner of the room with a bleeding wound on his face: Bah! he was hardly worth a kick now. A miserable rag of humanity, trampled in the dust as he had been wont to trample those whom he despised. His very life he owed to one of the despised rabble, and his daughter, who was his pride and joy, would be the property of a man whom in the past he would have looked on as lower than his dog. She would have to cook and wash for him as Marianne Vallon had cooked and washed up at the château. It was that, or the guillotine for the lot of them. Ah! this revolution was indeed a great thing. It had turned the tables on those proud aristos with a vengeance. More power to its elbow, and long life to Georges Danton and all its makers.

Long life above all to the child of the Revolution, André Vallon.