The Pocket Bible; or, Christian the Printer: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century

CHAPTER XII.
THE DUKE OF ANJOU

The headquarters of the royal army were at the suburb of Font, now in ruins. The Duke of Anjou, brother of King Charles IX, occupied at Font, in the center of the royal encampment, a house that went by the name of the "Reservoir," since within its yard lay the reservoir into which the waters were gathered that the now destroyed aqueduct conducted into La Rochelle. The Prince's headquarters, although wrecked by the war, were repaired, and made fit for the royal guest, thanks to the industry of his valets, who upholstered and equipped the ruins with a mass of tapestries and furniture which the pack-mules carried in the wake of the army. The Prince's oratory, where, either in sacrilegious derision, or perhaps yielding to a mixture of fanaticism and lewdness, he both performed his orisons and indulged his debaucheries, was tapestried in violet velvet, garlanded with fringes that were gathered up by gold and silver tassels. Daylight never penetrated the voluptuous retreat, which only a vermillion chandelier illumined with its candles of perfumed wax. On one side of the apartment stood a prayer-stool surmounted with an ivory crucifix; on the opposite side was a thickly cushioned lounge. A Turkish carpet covered the floor. A velvet portiere, closed at this moment, communicated with an inside room.

It was about eight in the evening. Cornelia Mirant, captured on the beach of La Rochelle the night before by the Marquis of Montbar, had just been introduced by him into the oratory of the Duke of Anjou. A feverish agitation imparted an unwonted glow to the countenance of the young girl. Her eyes glistened; her beauty was particularly radiant; a certain coquetish touch was noticeable in the arrangement of her hair; her Rochelois clothing, torn to shreds during the previous night's encounter, had been changed for a robe of poppy-red brocade. A broad embroidered scarf supported and concealed her right hand. The wound she received the day before on the neck had been dressed with care by one of the Duke's own surgeons. Monsieur Montbar – a youth barely twenty years of age, but whose delicate features were prematurely blighted by incontinence – had exchanged his war armor for the apparel of the court. His hair was artistically curled. From his ears hung a pair of earrings encrusted with precious stones; jet black frills hung down from his wrists and encased his hands; a short mantle was thrown over his shoulders; tight-fitting hose and a toque garnished with a brooch of rubies completed his dainty outfit. The Marquis had just brought Cornelia into the oratory, and was saying to her: "My pretty saucebox, you are now in the oratory of the Prince of Anjou, brother of our well-beloved King Charles IX."

"One feels as if in a palace of fairies!" answered Cornelia looking around with feigned and childish wonderment. "Oh, what splendid tapestries! What gorgeous ornaments! It seems I must be dreaming, monseigneur! Can it be possible that the Prince, so great a Prince, deigns to cast his eyes upon so poor a girl as I?"

"Come, my pretty lassy, do not cast down your eyes. Be sincere – you shall ever after feel the glory of having been, if but for one day, the mistress of the King of France's brother. But what are you thinking about?"

"Monseigneur, all this that is happening to me seems a dream. No! You are making sport of a poor girl. Monseigneur the Duke of Anjou does not think of me."

"You will see him in a minute, I assure you; he is just now in conference with Fra Hervé, his confessor." And turning towards the still closed portiere, he proceeded: "I hear the curtains drawn back, and steps in the neighboring room – it is monseigneur."

Hardly had the Marquis pronounced these last words when the drapery was raised, giving passage to the Duke of Anjou. The Prince was then twenty-eight years of age; overindulgence had weakened his gait, and imparted to his effeminate physiognomy a wily aspect, and a suggestion of cruelty and hypocrisy to his smile; added to this, excessive ornamentation rendered his appearance trivial and even sinister. Monsieur Montbar took a few steps towards the Duke, whispered in his ear and pointed to Cornelia. The girl thrilled with suppressed emotion; her right hand, hidden in the wide folds of her scarf, seemed to twitch convulsively and involuntarily to rise to her bosom. She contemplated the Prince with mixed horror and curiosity. Her eyes glistened, but she quickly lowered them before the libidinous glance of the Prince, who, while speaking with the Marquis, regarded her covetously. He said to his favorite: "You are right, my pet; her beauty gives promise of great delight; leave us alone; I may call you in again."

The Marquis of Montbar withdrew. Left alone with Cornelia, the Duke of Anjou stepped to the lounge, stretched himself out upon it nonchalantly with his head resting on the cushion, pulled a gold comfit-holder from his pocket, took a pastille out of it, masticated it, and after a few minutes of silent revery said to the Rochelois:

"Approach, my pretty girl!"

Cornelia raised her eyes heavenward. Her countenance became inspired. A slight pallor overcast it. Her glistening eyes grew moist. Distress was stamped on her features as she muttered to herself: "Adieu, father! Adieu, Antonicq! The hour of self-sacrifice has sounded for me!"

Surprised at the immobility of Cornelia, whose face he could not see distinctly, the Duke of Anjou sat up and repeated impatiently: "Approach! You seem to be deaf, as well as mute. I told you to approach. By God's death, hurry up! Come and lie down beside me!"

Cornelia, without the Prince's noticing her motions, disengaged her arm from the folds of the scarf, and stepped deliberately towards the lounge on which he had again stretched himself out. Again he motioned her to approach, saying: "Come here, I tell you. I would fear to damn myself forever by contact with such a satanic heretic as you, but for Fra Hervé's promise to give me absolution after our amorous encounter."

And rising from his soft lounge, the Prince opened his arms to Cornelia. The girl approached; she bowed down; then, quick as thought she seized the Duke by the hair with her left hand, at the same time drawing out of the folds of her scarf her right hand armed with a short sharp steel dagger with which she struck the Prince several blows in the region of the heart, crying: "Die, butcher of my brothers! Die, cowardly assassin of women and children!"

The Duke of Anjou wore under his jacket a coat of mail of steel so close meshed and well tempered that Cornelia's dagger broke under the blows that she dealt, while the frightened Prince called out for help, gasping: "Murder! She assassinates me! Murder!"

At the Prince's cries and the noise of the struggle between them the Marquis of Montbar, together with several domestics of the royal household, hurried into the oratory, from the contiguous room where they always stood in waiting; they flung themselves upon Cornelia and seized her by the wrists, while the Prince, freed from the grasp of the brave maid, ran livid and demented to his prayer-stool, where he threw himself down upon his knees, and, with lips white with terror, shivering in every part of his body, and with his teeth clattering in his head, he stammered: "Almighty God, thanks be to Thee! Thou hast protected Thy unworthy servitor!" And bending low, till his forehead touched the ground, the terrified libertine smote his chest exclaiming: "Mea culpa! mea culpa! mea maxima culpa!"⁸⁴

While the Duke of Anjou was thus giving thanks to his God for having escaped the dagger of the young Protestant girl, she, held firmly by the seigneurs and retainers who heaped upon her insults and threats of death, stood erect with proud front, defied them with steady eyes, and preserved a disdainful silence. Holding himself responsible for the conduct of the Huguenot girl, whom he had taken to his master's bed, the Marquis of Montbar drew his sword and was about to run her through, when the Prince, rising from his prayer-stool cried out: "Do not kill her, my pet! Oh, no, she must not die so soon!"

The favorite re-sheathed his sword. The Duke of Anjou, now pale with rage, staggered to his lounge and sat down. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead, cast a look of implacable hatred upon Cornelia, and after regarding her in silence for a moment, said: "Well, my pretty lass – so you meant to assassinate me!"

"Yes – because you are the worthy son of Catherine De Medici, the worthy brother of Charles IX; because you suborned an assassin to poison Coligny!"

The Duke of Anjou remained unmoved, and remarked with a cruel smile: "You are a resolute girl, resolute in word and deed. I came near learning as much at my cost! What is your name?"

"Cornelia Mirant."

"What! You are the daughter of the mariner who last night almost threw into utter ruins our Bayhead redoubt? You are the daughter of the devilish Huguenot who has just revictualed La Rochelle?"

The Cordelier Fra Hervé had just raised the portiere and was about to step into the oratory, when he heard the young girl declare her name to be Cornelia Mirant. The monk immediately stopped. Half-hidden by the tapestry, he remained on the threshold of the room and listened to the rest of the dialogue between the Huguenot girl and the Prince.

"You must be a girl of honorable habits. How came you to yield so readily to the propositions of the Marquis?"

"In the hope of being able to strike you dead with the dagger that I found in the tent of your officer," boldly answered Cornelia.

"A new Judith, you seem to see in me a modern Holofernes! Everything about you breathes courage, honor, chastity. By God! I am becoming interested in you. You have wished my death – well, I wish that you live. So brave a girl should not die."

"What, monseigneur! Shall this wretch escape punishment!" cried the Marquis of Montbar, while Cornelia thought to herself with a shudder: "I dread the clemency of the son of Catherine De Medici more than I do his ire."

"Yes, my pet," answered the Duke of Anjou to his minion; "to-day I am in a merciful mood. I shall practice the evangelical morality of Jesus our Savior; I shall return good for evil! I wish well to this haughty republican girl, worthy of the days of Sparta and Rome! I wish the brave girl so well that – here is my sentence: Pinion the virgin's arms firmly; have her watched carefully in order that she may not do away with herself; and then throw her to the common soldiers of the camp. By God's death! The gay fellows will have a dainty repast! Take away from my sight the immaculate virgin, who will not be a virgin much longer!"

"Oh! Mercy! Mercy! Death sooner! The most horrible death! Mercy!" stammered Cornelia, aroused from her stupor; and dropping upon her knees at the feet of the Duke of Anjou, she raised to him her hands in supplication, and implored in heartrending accents: "Martyrdom! For mercy's sake, martyrdom!"

The Prince turned to his favorites: "Let the pretty heretic be taken to the garrison on the spot – on the spot, my pets. We shall follow and witness the sport of our soldiers."

Already was Cornelia being dragged away when Fra Hervé suddenly interposed. The courtiers bowed low before the confessor of the Duke of Anjou.

"My son," said the Cordelier, stepping straight towards the Prince, "revoke the order you have given. The heretic should not be thrown to the soldiers."

"Father," broke in the Duke of Anjou with exasperation, "are you aware the girl tried to assassinate me?"

"I know it all – both the attempted crime and its failure. You shall revoke your order."

"God's blood! Reverend Father, seeing you know it all, I declare, notwithstanding my profound respect for you, that I insist upon my revenge. My orders shall be executed."

"My son, you are but a child," answered Fra Hervé in a tone of disdainful superiority; and leaning towards the Prince the monk whispered in his ear, while Cornelia, now recognizing Fra Hervé, shuddered from head to foot.

"I dreaded the clemency of the Prince – the monk's mercy terrifies me. Oh, Lord God, my only hope lies in You!"

"As God lives, my reverend Father, you are right! I am but a child!" cried the Duke of Anjou, beaming with infernal joy after listening to the confidential remarks whispered to him by the monk. He then again addressed his favorites: "Take the heretic girl to the reverend Father's cell. But, good Father, keep a watchful eye upon her. Her life is now as precious to you as to me."

Cornelia was led away upon the steps of the fratricidal monk.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE BILL IS PAID

Fra Hervé lived in the house of the Reservoir of the Font suburb in a sort of cellar that was vaulted, somber and damp as a cave, and which one time served as the direct communication to the aqueduct by means of a stone staircase, closed from above by a trap door. The monk's gloomy lodging was reached through a corridor that opened into one of the rooms situated on the ground floor, and, since the siege, transformed into a hall reserved for the officers of the Duke of Anjou.

The interior of Fra Hervé's retreat revealed the austerity of the man's cenobitic habits. A wooden box, filled with ashes and resembling a coffin, served him for bed. A stool stood before a rough hewn table on which were an hour-glass, a breviary, a skull and an iron lamp. The latter cast a pale light over the cave, in a corner of which a heavy trap door masked the now disused stone staircase, the entrance to which had been walled from within by the royalists, in order to prevent a surprise from that quarter, seeing the water was turned off.

Taken to the gloomy cell, Cornelia found herself alone with the monk. She was aware there was no hope of escape or of mercy for her. The cell had no issue other than the corridor that connected with the hall of the Prince's officers of the guard, which was constantly crowded with the Prince's retinue. Fra Hervé's face was emaciated. His forehead, over which a few locks of grey hair tumbled in disorder, was bony and lustrous as the skull upon his table. Except for the somber luster of his hollow eyes, one would at first sight take the scarred and fleshless head of the monk for that of a corpse. He was seated on the stool. Cornelia, standing before him, shuddered with horror. She found herself alone with the monster who, at the battle of Roche-la-Belle, cut the throat of Odelin, the father of Antonicq, her betrothed. Fra Hervé remained meditative for a moment, and then addressed the young girl in a hollow voice:

"You are aware of the fate that Monseigneur the Duke of Anjou reserved for you in punishment for your attempted murder? You were to be thrown to the soldiers of the garrison – "

"I am in your power – what do you want of me?" interrupted Cornelia.

"The salvation of your soul."

"My soul belongs to God. I have lived and I shall die in my faith, and in execration for the Catholic church."

"This is but another evidence of the impiousness of the Lebrenn family, a family of reprobates, of accursed people, to whom this poor creature was soon to be joined by even closer bonds than those that already join her to them!"

"What! You know – ?"

"A Rochelois prisoner informed me that you were the betrothed of Antonicq, the son of him who was my brother."

"Monk, I shall not invoke to you the bonds of family – you have reddened your hands with your brother's blood. I shall not invoke your pity – you are pitiless. But, seeing that no heretics have been burnt for quite a while, I hope you will consent to cause me to be condemned to the pyre for a hardened heretic. I abhor the Pope, his Church and his priests! I abhor them as I do Kings. I execrate all monks, and the whole tonsured fraternity."

Cornelia calculated upon exasperating the Cordelier to fury, and thus to wrest from him the order to be taken to immediate execution – her only refuge from the threats of the Duke of Anjou. But the unfortunate girl deceived herself. Fra Hervé listened to her impassively, and resumed:

"You are cunning. You aspire to martyrdom because death will protect you from the outrage that you fear. I am not your dupe. There will be no pyre for you!"

"Woe is me!" murmured the young girl, seeing her last hope dashed. "Woe is me! I am lost!"

"You are saved – if you will!" Fra Hervé proceeded to say.

"What do I hear?" cried Cornelia perceiving a new glimmer of hope. "What must I do? Speak!"

"Publicly abjure your heresy! Renounce Satan and your father! Humbly implore our holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church to receive you into her bosom at her mercy and discretion. The soilure, now upon you, being washed off, you shall take the eternal vows and shall bury in the shadow of the cloister the criminal life you have led in the past. Choose: either immediate abjuration, or – to the soldiers. These pious Catholics will slake their amorousness upon you."

"Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!" exclaimed Cornelia, seized with terror, and her head reeling. "Am I awake? Am I dreaming? Can a man, a priest, outrage a woman's modesty to such an extent? A curse upon you, wretch!"

"What audacity! 'Outrage' a 'woman'!" put in Fra Hervé with a wild and diabolical guffaw. "Is there such a thing as a heretic being a 'woman'? No! A heretic is a female, like the she-wolf in the jungle. Is there such a thing as outrage with a she-wolf?"

"Mercy!" stammered Cornelia in despair. "Have mercy upon me!"

"No mercy!" answered Fra Hervé sententiously. "You shall enter a cloister, or – you shall be given over to the lust of the soldiers. It shall be so! And now, keep your eyes upon this hour-glass," added the monk, pointing to the instrument for marking time that stood near the dead man's skull. "Should you, when the water is run down, not have decided instantly to abjure and to depart this very night to a convent, you shall be delivered to the Catholic soldiers!"

And the monk, resting his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand, remained silent as he looked with fixed eyes at the running of the water from the upper into the lower bulb of the clepsydra, while fondling his heavy chaplet with the hand that remained free.

"What am I to do?" the Protestant girl asked herself. "What am I to do in this extremity? Almighty God, have mercy upon me!"

"One-half of the water has run down!" observed Fra Hervé in his sepulchral voice. "Decide! There is still time!"

At the lugubrious announcement Cornelia's mind began to wander; still, one lucid thought rose clear above the growing vertigo that obsessed the young girl's thoughts – the thought of putting an end to her life. Her bewildered eyes sought to penetrate here and there the dark recesses of the cell, which the dim light of the lamp threw heavily into the shade. They sought mechanically for some article that she might use as a weapon with which to inflict death upon herself. Suddenly Cornelia's eyes bulged out in amazement. She held her breath and remained petrified, thinking herself the sport of a vision. Fra Hervé, because of his eyes being fixed upon the hour-glass and his back turned to the trap door that masked the stone stairs leading to the aqueduct, could not take in what was happening. But Cornelia saw the trap door rise noiselessly, inexplicably; presently, in the measure that it rose, the two hands and then the two arms that raised it heaved in sight; simultaneously there appeared the top of an iron casque, and an instant later the face under the casque – and Cornelia recognized Antonicq – her betrothed, Antonicq Lebrenn!

"The water will run out before you have time to say an Ave," warned the Cordelier in a hollow voice, without removing his eyes from the clepsydra, and he added: "Heretic! Heretic! Make haste! Abjure your idolatry! If not you shall be thrown to the soldiers, you shall be given to the good Catholics of the whole army!"

The imminence of the danger and the prospect of safety restored the young girl's presence of mind. The instant her eyes discovered her betrothed she became silent, motionless, watchful. The last threats of the monk reached Antonicq's ears at the moment when he had completely raised the trap door, and wrung from him despite himself an exclamation of fury. Fra Hervé turned sharply around and bounded from his seat in bewilderment at the sight of the young man leaping into the room from underground. Cornelia, in full control of herself, and remembering that the monk's cell was separated from the hall of the officers of the guard by a short corridor of only about twenty paces, ran back to the door that opened on the corridor intending to close it, and bolt it from within. Fra Hervé divined the young girl's purpose, and, meaning to prevent it, precipitated himself upon her. That instant Antonicq reached his betrothed, disengaged her from the clutches of the monk, seized him by the shoulders and flung him back violently. Free once more, Cornelia quickly carried out her purpose. She closed the door gently, and bolted and barred it from within, thus shielding herself and Antonicq behind a barrier that the officers of the Duke of Anjou would consume considerable time before they could succeed in breaking down. At the very moment that Cornelia closed the door Fra Hervé sounded the alarm in a sufficiently penetrating voice to be heard in the hall of the guards:

"Help! Treason! To arms! Help! The Huguenots!"

But instantly the Cordelier's voice expired upon his lips. A vigorous hand seized him by the throat, the blade of a dagger shone in the air and twice plunged into the fratricide's breast. He fell over backward, bathed in his own blood, straightened himself for an instant, foamed at the mouth, and breathed his last; – and a muffled voice cried "Twenty-five– the bill is paid. Now I can die in peace. My sister and her daughter are avenged! The ransom of the crime is paid in full."

The Franc-Taupin had emerged from under ground after Antonicq, and preceded Captain Mirant, who rushed to his daughter's embrace while the Franc-Taupin stabbed the fratricidal monk to death.

"Let us flee!" said Cornelia to her father and her betrothed, after responding to their demonstrations of tenderness. "The monk's cries reached the hall of the guards at the head of the corridor. I hear them coming. Do you hear those steps? The sound of those approaching voices?"

"We have nothing to fear. Your presence of mind, my dear girl, has insured our safe retreat. They will find it no easy task to enter the cell. The door is thick, the bolt solid," remarked the Franc-Taupin, examining and fastening more tightly the bolt with imperturbable calmness. "Cornelia, Antonicq, and you, Captain Mirant, descend to the aqueduct quickly, and wait for me just this side of the mine that I planted in the underground passage, and near which Master Barbot and the sailors are waiting for our signal."

Turning to Serpentin, the apprentice, who also came in after Captain Mirant the Franc-Taupin said:

"Come here, my gay fellow – bring me the little machine and implements. We shall serve up a peppery broth to the royalists."

Cornelia, her father and Antonicq hastened to descend the stairs of the underground passage that the trap door masked. Hardly had they disappeared, leaving the Franc-Taupin and the apprentice behind in Fra Hervé's cell, when they heard violent knocks given at the door, and a confused noise of voices calling out:

"Fra Hervé! Fra Hervé!"

The Marquis of Montbar was heard saying: "A minute ago he cried: 'Help! Treason!' He now makes no answer. The witch may have strangled the reverend Father!"

And the voices outside continued to cry tumultuously: "Fra Hervé! Fra Hervé! We can not get in! The door is bolted from within. The devil take it! Open to us, Fra Hervé! We come to help you!"

"Quick! Bring levers and an axe – or, better yet, let us break in the door!" the voice of the Marquis of Montbar was again heard to say. "Run for a company of my soldiers! We shall wait here. Hurry up!"

"Oh! Oh!" observed the Franc-Taupin, after silently listening to the observations from the other side of the door, to which he had glued his ears. "The royalists are inviting themselves in large numbers to the banquet that I am preparing for them! And why not? When there is broth for five guests, there is enough for ten, if the housekeeper is economical. Just wait, my friends! My broth is cooking! It is so toothsome that a single spoonful will do the work for twenty or thirty persons."

"Master Josephin, here are the implements and the little machine," said Serpentin in a low voice, as he drew out of a bag that he brought suspended from his shoulders and handed over to the Franc-Taupin a heavy iron box about one foot long and six inches high and wide. The box, filled full with powder, was pierced in the center by a narrow slit through which a sulphured fuse was inserted. The Franc-Taupin took in his hands the redoubtable petard, examined the structure of the door minutely, and after a moment's reflection inserted the iron box with no little difficulty under the lower hinge. The Franc-Taupin then rose, and patting the apprentice upon the cheek said to him in a low voice:

"Tell me, my lad, why do I place the little machine so tightly between the floor and the hinge?"

Serpentin reflected for a moment, scratched his ear, and then reeled off his answer after the fashion of a boy who recites his lesson:

"Master, you place the little machine in that way in order that, when it blows up, it may tear up the door along with the hinge; the torn up hinge will tear up the masonry in which it is fastened; the torn up masonry will tear up a part of the wall; and the torn up wall will bring down the ceiling. As a result of all this the debris will roll down upon the St. Bartholomew lambkins, whose flesh will have been scratched by the flying fragments of the little machine which will have been hurled in all directions, and will have whistled and ricocheted like artillery balls."

"Wise – wise answer, my lad," observed the Franc-Taupin pinching the apprentice's ear with a satisfied look. "Continue to profit by my lessons in this manner, and you will become an accomplished miner, and you then will be able to contribute handsomely towards the scattering into fragments of a goodly number of papists and royalists. Now, off with you, hurry down the stone steps, and wait for me at the bottom."

Serpentin obeyed. The Franc-Taupin knelt down at the threshold of the door, took from his belt a horn of powder and spilt along the floor a sufficient quantity to quite cover up the fuse. Thereupon, retreating on his knees, he laid down a long train of powder. The train skirted Fra Hervé's corpse and ended at the opening of the trap door, down which he descended. Josephin stopped on the stair so that only his head appeared above the level of the flooring. Listening in the direction of the door, behind which he could hear a confused noise of voices, he said to himself: "The Catholic vermin is swarming behind the door, but I still have time to cut my twenty-fifth notch."

He took the little stick which he habitually carried hung on a string from a buttonhole of his jacket, pulled out his dagger, and cutting into the wood, the aged soldier said:

"Hena, my sister's daughter, was plunged twenty-five times into the flames by the priests of the Church of Rome. I have just put to death my twenty-fifth Roman Catholic and Apostolic priest!"

As he murmured these words to himself, Josephin contemplated the corpse of Fra Hervé, stretched out upon his back in a pool of blood, with stiffened arms, clenched fists and half bent knees. The light from the lamp shed its pale luster upon the monk's face upon which the agony of death was still stamped. The jaws were close set; foam oozed out at the lips; the corpse's glassy and fixed eyes still seemed to preserve their threatening aspect from the depth of their cavities.

"Oh!" exclaimed the Franc-Taupin with a terrible sigh, "How many times, alas! how very many times, seated at the hearth of my poor sister, when the unfortunate being who lies there dead and still foaming at his mouth with rage was a little boy, how often I took him and his younger brother Odelin upon my knees! caressed their little blonde heads! kissed their plump cheeks! Joining in their infantine amusements, I entertained them, I gladdened them with my Franc-Taupin songs! In those days Hervé equalled his brother in the gentleness of his character and the kindness of his heart. The two were the joy, the pride, the hope of my sister and of Christian! But one day a monk, a demon, Fra Girard, took possession of the mind of unhappy Hervé, dominated it, led it astray, corrupted it, and debased it forever! Oh! priests of Rome! priests of Rome! A curse upon you! Alas! out of the sweet boy, whom I loved so dearly, you made a bloodthirsty fanatic, a wrathful madman, a fratricide – and it became my duty to smite him with my dagger – him – him – my own sister's child!"

The Franc-Taupin was drawn from his revery by the ringing sound of blows struck with maces and the butts of arquebuses against the door from without, and splintering its woodwork, while, rising above the tumult, the voice of the Marquis of Montbar was heard crying: "To work! Strike hard! Harder still! Break in the door!"

"Well! The hour has come for the St. Bartholomew lambkins to dance in the air!" said the Franc-Taupin. Without hurrying, without losing his calmness, he pulled from his pocket a tinder box, a wick and a flint and steel. Striking upon the flint with the iron, he hummed between his teeth the old song that the memories of Odelin's and Hervé's infancy had recalled to his mind:

 
"A Franc-Taupin had an ash-tree bow,
All eaten with worms, and all knotted its cord;
His arrow was made out of paper, and plumed,
And tipped at the end with a capon's spur.
Derideron, vignette on vignon! Derideron!"
 

During the song of the old soldier, who calmly continued to strike at the flint, the blows aimed at the door redoubled in violence. Presently it was heard to crack, yield, break, and one of its fragments fell inside the apartment. Immediately thereupon Josephin applied the lighted wick to the train of powder and vanished underground letting down the heavy trap door over his head. The train of powder took fire, shot along its course as rapid as a flash of lightning, and reached the fuse of the petard, which exploded with a great crash at the very moment when the door, finally broken through, offered a passage to the Marquis of Montbar, closely followed by his henchmen. Like himself, they were blown up, mutilated or killed by the fragments of the iron box which flew into pieces. The masonry of the door, being torn down by the explosion, ripped the rest of the wall after it, bringing down the ceiling which fell in a heap upon the heads of the royalists.