CHAPTER XIII
SANCTUARY
Into the late afternoon of that endless day of horror with its
perpetual alarms, its volleying musketry, rolling drums, and distant
muttering of angry multitudes, Mme. de Plougastel and Aline sat
waiting in that handsome house in the Rue du Paradis. It was no
longer for Rougane they waited. They realized that, be the reason
what it might—and by now many reasons must no doubt exist—this
friendly messenger would not return. They waited without knowing
for what. They waited for whatever might betide.
At one time early in the afternoon the roar of battle approached them, racing swiftly in their direction, swelling each moment in volume and in horror. It was the frenzied clamour of a multitude drunk with blood and bent on destruction. Near at hand that fierce wave of humanity checked in its turbulent progress. Followed blows of pikes upon a door and imperious calls to open, and thereafter came the rending of timbers, the shivering of glass, screams of terror blending with screams of rage, and, running through these shrill sounds, the deeper diapason of bestial laughter.
It was a hunt of two wretched Swiss guardsmen seeking blindly to escape. And they were run to earth in a house in the neighbourhood, and there cruelly done to death by that demoniac mob. The thing accomplished, the hunters, male and female, forming into a battalion, came swinging down the Rue du Paradis, chanting the song of Marseilles—a song new to Paris in those days:
Allons, enfants de la patrie!
Le jour de gloire est arrivé.
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'étendard sanglant est levé.
