les scintillant with jewels;
calm, and supercilious, mocking to a man. There was a momentary gasp
of awe, and then the spell was broken by the aristocrats themselves. A
pistol spoke, and a volley followed. In the hall some stumbled forward,
some hurtled backward, and some sank down in nerveless heaps. But those
that remained did not again retreat. Reinforced by others, that crowded
in behind, they charged boldly up the stairs, headed by a ragged,
red capped giant named Souvestre--a man whom the Marquis had once
irreparably wronged.

The sight of him was a revelation to Bellecour. This assault was
Souvestre's work; the fellow had been inciting the people of Bellecour
for the past twelve months, long indeed before the outbreak of the
revolution proper, and at last he had roused them to the pitch of
accompanying him upon his errand of tardy but relentless vengeance.

With a growl the Marquis raised his pistol. But Souvestre saw the
movement, and with a laugh he did the like. Simultaneously there were
two reports, and Bellecour's arm fell shattered to his side. Souvestre
continued to advance, his smoking pistol in one hand and brandishing
a huge sabre with the other. Behind him, howling and roaring like the
beasts of prey they were become, surged the tenantry of Bellecour to pay
the long-standing debt of hate to their seigneur.

"Here," said Des Cadoux, with a grimace, "endeth the chapter of our
lives. I wonder, do they keep rappee in heaven?" He snapped down the lid
of his gold snuffbox--that faithful companion and consoler of so
many years--and cast it viciously at the head of one of the oncoming
peasants. Then tossing back the lace from his wrist he brought his sword
into guard and turned aside a murderous stroke which an assailant aimed
at him.

"Animal," he snapped viciously, as he set to work, "it is the first time
that my chaste blade has been crossed with such dirty steel as yours. I
hope, for the honour of Cadoux, that it may not be quite the last."

Up, and ever up, swept that murderous tide. The half of those that
had held the stairs lay weltering upon them as if in a last attempt to
barricade with their bodies what they could no longer defend with their
hands. A bare half-score remained standing, and amongst these
that gallant old Cadoux, who had by now accounted for a half-dozen
sans-culottes, and was hence in high glee, a man rejuvenesced. His
sallies grew livelier and more barbed as the death-tide rose h