The crowd in the meantime had worked its will in the old château. With the exit of the hero and heroine of a brief romance, reaction had set in. The fury of reprisal, merged for a moment in laughter and coarse jests, reasserted its domination. The aristos were ashamed and punished; the ci-devant Marigny lay half dead on the floor; but this seemed hardly compensation enough for two smouldering cottages and the death of a valiant woman. Not enough, of a truth, with all this magnificence flaunted in these gorgeous halls, with tapestries and sconces and mirrors, all accessible to eager, needy hands. Not much notice was taken of Marigny. Once kicked conveniently aside, he was allowed to remain lying there. Dead or alive? Who cared, when there were damask curtains to be had for the taking? - useful things to replace shawls and blankets long since worn to rags. Down came the curtains, one after the other, torn down by vigorous hands. In the vast banqueting halls there was not much that was useful, but there were chairs and tables to replace humble ones that had been used for fuel when other wood was so dear. And in the bedrooms there were beds and mattresses and pillows and blankets; there was china and there were carpets. The crowd wandered from room to room, from stately hall down to pantries and kitchens and bakehouses. The cellars were empty, and so were the larders, but there were pots and pans galore. Where silver and gold were hidden they knew not. Perhaps they never even thought of such things. It was the chairs and the tables, the curtains and the pots and pans that they needed and that they took.

Who shall judge them? Who condemn? They had nothing, and they took. For generations successive governments had taken from them all that they had. Human nature will always try and hit back when it has the chance. They were not evil, these people here; they were not really cruel and rapacious by nature: hunger and want had made them so, and the sense of oppression and injustice. Who, of a truth, shall condemn them?

When they were tired of looking and had their arms full, when they were wearied with the day's work and emotion, they wandered homeward. The evening was drawing in, and squalid homes called to them, and the longing to gloat over stolen treasure and find use for it all. One by one, or in groups of twos and threes, they trudged back through the vast halls, shorn now of much glory, down marble stairs, and across the forecourt. Their naked feet were sore with tramping; they wanted to get home.

André stood for a long time by the door, listening and watching. The great reception room was deserted by now, but he could heard the crowd wandering about the château; he could hear cries of delight and laughter and guessed what was going on. He made his way across the room to the window, staggering in the darkness like a man drunk. Leaning against the window frame, he gazed out into the fast-gathering gloom. From the distance, now and then, there still came the dull rumbling of faraway thunder, and from time to time the treetops were lit up with the reflex of distant lightning. but the storm never broke over Marigny on that never-to-be-forgotten day in July.

André watched the crowd, as, one by one, they came through the gate, bearing their loot - furniture, tapestries, clothes. The women staggered under their loads; the men looked like beasts of burden, dragging their shoeless feet over the paved forecourt. Slowly, wearily, they made their way down the wooded slope. André, through the darkness, could still distinguish some of them: the women in their faded kirtles; the naked bodies of little children; Tarbot and his red cap, Molé and his ragged shirt. He thought of his mother, lying on the old paillasse, with a ragged shawl to cover her body, and all around her the ruins of her home. And with thoughts of her there came into his soul an immense wave of shame.

The large empty room with its torn tapestries and gilded chairs lying topsy-turvy about the floor became filled all at once with imps and demons who hopped all around him and cried, "Shame!" in his ears. They called him a fool and coward. Why not have allowed the mob to have its way with the aristos? Were they not his friends? Riffraff, like himself? Then why have interfered? There might have been some satisfaction in seeing justice done. A life for a life! Those miserable aristos for the saintly woman who lay silent and stark in her devastated home.

With a rough gesture he brushed those imaginary demons away. Shame had brought the blood beating in his temples. "Coward!" and "Traitor!" he called himself, and then signed with a great unexplainable longing. "Justice! Truth! My God! where are they now?"

The room was so still! So still! André strained his ears to hear any sound that might come from the boudoir. After a moment or two he heard a soft grating; the door was opened very gently, a narrow shaft of light pierced the gloom, and the old priest tiptoed stealthily into the room. André listened without stirring: the old man had left the door slightly ajar and now groped his way cautiously about in the darkness. A moment or two later soft murmurings came to André's ears; then a sigh - a struggle. And the priest's kindly words:

"Lean on my arm, monseigneur..."

And then another sigh. A whisper: "Aurore!"

"She is safe, monseigneur. Shall we go to her?"

"Has that canaille gone?"

"There is no one here now, monseigneur..."

"My head! My head! May God punish those ruffians!"

"Do lean on me, monseinguer.... I am quite strong.... Don't be afraid."

André's eyes, accustomed to the gloom, could now perceive the two old men moving slowly towards the door. Instinctively he stepped back from the window farther into the shadows, and thus, hidden from view, he waited until the priest had piloted De Marigny back into the boudoir.

As the Curé was about to follow, André called to him:

"Citizen Rosemonde!" The priest paused with his hand still on the door knob, and André called again: "Close that door. I want to speak with you."

The voice was low, scarcely above a whisper, but so peremptory that the priest, after a few seconds' hesitation, closed the door and came across the room. With the passing of immediate danger to Monseigneur and Aurore he seemed to have recovered something of his natural dignity. He approached André not as a servant beckoned to by his master, but as a minister of God, with a mission to mediate between warring souls.

"What is it you wish, my son?" he asked.

"Only to give you a word of warning, citizen," André replied curtly. "You must understand once and for all that my mind is made up. I have decided to take that woman in there for my wife. As you have taken the oath of allegiance to the Republic, you are bound in law to perform the marriage ceremony. You know that, do you not?"

"I know it, my son, but-"

"There is no 'but' about it. If you refuse you forfeit every privilege which your oath of allegiance has conferred upon you. Your church will be closed, and you may or may not escape with your life. But even that is beside the question, for if the marriage is not solemnized in your church it will be done in the maire which, as you also know, is all that the law requires."

"André, my child," the priest protested, "I implore you to think over what you propose doing. I beg it of you in your mother's name-"

"Do not speak of my mother, Citizen Curé," André broke in harshly, "or I swear to you that I will call the worst of that rabble back and hand over that damned assassin to them to be dealt with as they choose."

"But such a marriage is an outrage, André!"

"Was not the eviction of two defenceless women and a pack of starving children an outrage? Was not the ruin of their homes an outrage? My mother's death - was that not a murder most foul?"

"Ah!" the priest exclaimed, "then you admit it, André?"

"Admit what?"

"That your whole purpose is one of revenge."

"Call it justice, Citizen Curé. You'll be nearer the mark."

"And you, my son, will be the first to suffer."

André shrugged with cynical indifference.

"Bah!" he said. "Your friend Marigny would tell you that muckworms such as I are made to suffer."

The priest was silent for a moment or two. His heart ached for this man whom he had seen grow up in this village - a merry, care-free lad whom the cruelty of fate, and perhaps of men, had rendered bitter and cynical. But it ached also for the exquisite girl whose every instinct of pride and aloofness would be outraged by this monstrous union.

"You will kill her, André," he sighed, "if you persist."

"Bah!" André retorted drily. "She's young. She will get used to being the wife of a caitiff. And anyhow, her life and that of her father will be safe. I can see to that."

"Alas!"

"Why alas?"

"They would sooner be dead."

André gave a scornful laugh.

"The aristo's sword," he said, "is still handy."

"I forbid you to mock, André," the priest retorted with energy. "Religion which you choose to ignore still holds sway in the hearts of many, and religion forbids-"

"Suicide," André broke in. "Yes, I know! Well, the rabble only needs recalling-"

"André, in Heaven's name, don't talk like that! I am appealing to your pity-"

"Pity? Would you call it pity to let a pack of snarling hyenas loose once again on this house, to stand by and see that arrogant old madman in there massacred before his daughter's eyes, to see her brutalized and outraged as a prelude to death? Is that what you would choose for her, Citizen Rosemonde?"

The old priest's head fell upon his breast. He felt utterly helpless and ashamed of his helplessness. A little while ago he believed in his mission of conciliation, but that mission had failed. his simple faith in divine interference had received a rude shock, as did his earnest belief in the justice of the Royalist cause. For here was a rebel who gloried in his rebellion, who demanded justice from God and man with as much right as the most earnest adherent to the old régime. Like André himself awhile ago, the Abbé Rosemonde could have signed with unutterable longing, "Truth? Justice? Where are they now?"

"I suppose," he said with a doleful shake of the head, "that you've said your last word, and that nothing which I can say-"

"No, citizen," André broke in impatiently, "nothing. I have said my last word. Go down into the village, if you have a mind, and talk to the men there. Tell them that religion bids them forego revenge, and that if a man smite you on the cheek, to hold out the other so that he might smite you again. Tell that to men who have toiled and starved and sweated and seen their wives and children die for want of food, while the tax collector stood at the door and seized the few sous that would have bought them bread. Tell it to men who have seen their brides dragged from their arms to satisfy the caprice of their seigneur. Talk to them of forgiveness, Citizen Curé, now that they are the masters of France and have the power to give back blow for blow the and outrage for outrage."

Again the priest was silent. There was so little that he could say. Never before had he been made to feel that there was something after all to be said for those terrorists who had earned for themselves the obloquy of half the world, but who had, of a truth, been the first to instill into a downtrodden people a sense of their power, both as men and as guardians of their families' welfare and of their family honour. Demagogues they were, and stirrers up of infinite trouble. They had let loose on the sacred soil of France a horde of savage brutes bent on ruin and persecution. All that was true enough, but there had been such an infinity of wrong to put right that nothing short of this immense upheaval could possibly have done it all. But dominating all other thoughts and fears in the old man's heart were those for Aurore.

"You will be kind to her, André," he implored, "if she consents."

"I care not if she consents or no," André retorted. "Either she is mine or I let loose the floodgates of the people's wrath on this house till there remains nothing of it but a few blackened stones like those of my mother's cottage, nothing but a memory of all the arrogance and the cruelty which have tuned us all into the wild beasts that we are."

André had spoken all along in a kind of hoarse murmur and without making a single gesture. Now his voice broke into a sob. He stood there in the darkness by the open window with the last glimmer of the western light outlining his clear-cut profile, the firm jaw and noble forehead with its crown of chestnut hair. And while he spoke he looked out into the distance, where far away in the peaceful valley below a puff of smoke still hung in the heavy storm-laden air. Just a puff of smoke there where the cottage once stood, where he, André, had spent the thoughtless years of childhood, where he had first learned the bitter lesson of manhood, where he had dreamed and planned and waited for this hour which had struck at last.

"You have not yet told me, André" the Curé said at last, "what you wish me to do."

"I want you to be prepared to give my bride and me the nuptial blessing in your church to-morrow."

"Blessing!" the priest exclaimed with the nearest approach to sarcasm he had ever in his life expressed.

"As you please, of course - or as she pleases, for the matter of that. I am satisfied with the maire, as the law directs."

"I will do as God wills," the priest concluded with gentle dignity. "But let me tell you this, my son: your union with Aurore de Marigny is on the understanding that her life and that of her father and servants will be safe. God is long-suffering, remember, but believe me that He will know how to punish you if you should break your word."

He turned and slowly groped his way across the room. André watched him till the door of the boudoir finally closed upon him.

Then he, too, went his way.