the workmen of the factory, and all
together, Wolves and Devourers, though very inferior in number,
opposed themselves to the band of vagabonds, who were proceeding to new
excesses. Some of these wretches, still further excited by the little
man with the ferret's face, a secret emissary of Baron Tripeaud,
now rushed in a mass towards the workshops of M. Hardy. Then began
a lamentable devastation. These people, seized with the mania of
destruction, broke without remorse machines of the greatest value, and
most delicate construction; half manufactured articles were pitilessly
destroyed; a savage emulation seemed to inspire these barbarians,
and those workshops, so lately the model of order and well-regulated
economy, were soon nothing but a wreck; the courts were strewed with
fragments of all kinds of wares, which were thrown from the windows with
ferocious outcries, or savage bursts of laughter. Then, still thanks to
the incitements of the little man with the ferret's face, the books
of M. Hardy, archives of commercial industry, so indispensable to the
trader, were scattered to the wind, torn, trampled under foot, in a sort
of infernal dance, composed of all that was most impure in this assembly
of low, filthy, and ragged men and women, who held each other by the
hand, and whirled round and round with horrible clamor. Strange and
painful contrasts! At the height of the stunning noise of these horrid
deeds of tumult and devastation, a scene of imposing and mournful calm
was taking place in the chamber of Marshal Simon's father, the door of
which was guarded by a few devoted men. The old workman was stretched
on his bed, with a bandage across his blood stained white hair. His
countenance was livid, his breathing oppressed, his look fixed and
glazed.

Marshal Simon, standing at the head of the bed, bending over his father,
watched in despairing anguish the least sign of consciousness on the
part of the dying man, near whom was a physician, with his finger on
the failing pulse. Rose and Blanche, brought hither by Dagobert, were
kneeling beside the bed, their hands clasped, and their eyes bathed in
tears; a little further, half hidden in the shadows of the room, for
the hours had passed quickly, and the night was at hand, stood Dagobert
himself, with his arms crossed upon his breast, and his features
painfully contracted. A profound and solemn silence reigned in this
chamber, only interrupted by the broken sobs of Rose and B