La Marseillaise.




CHAPTER V

THE SHEEP TURNED WOLVES


There were roars of anger and screams of terror in the night, and
above the Chateau de Bellecour the inky blackness of the heavens
was broken by a dull red glow, which the distant wayfarer might
have mistaken for the roseate tint of dawn, were it possible for
the dawn to restrict itself to so narrow an area.

Ever and anon a tongue of flame would lick up into the night towards
that russet patch of sky, betraying the cause of it and proclaiming
that incendiaries were at work. Above the ominous din that told of
the business afoot there came now and again the crack of a musket,
and dominating all other sounds was the sullen roar of the revolted
peasants, the risen serfs, the rebellious vassals of the Siegneur de
Bellecour.

For time has sped and has much altered in the speeding. Four years
have gone by since the night on which the lacerated Caron la Boulaye
was smuggled out of Bellecour in Robespierre's berline and in that
four years much of the things that were prophesied have come to pass
- aye, and much more besides that was undreamt of at the outset by
the revolutionaries. A gruesome engine that they facetiously called