 CHAPTER XXIX It was not difficult to guess which way the crowd had gone. Yells, hoots, and hoarse cries could be heard from the farther side of the river. Citizen Senter had been unable to keep the mob back until the arrival of the cavalry reinforcements. Within five minutes of the abduction of Deirele and Juliet, the crowd had broken through the line of soldiers, and had stormed the cart only to find it empty, and the prey disappeared. They are safe in the temple by now, shouted Santair and Horsley, in savage triumph, but seeing them all baffled. At first it seemed as if the wrath of the infuriated populace, fooled in its lust for vengeance, would vend itself against the common daunt of Paris and his soldiers. For a moment even Santair's ready cheeks had paled at the sudden vision of this unlooked for danger. Then just as suddenly the cry was raised, to the temple. To the temple. Came in ready response. The cry was soon taken up by the entire crowd, and in less than two minutes the perlues of the Hall of Justice were deserted, and the ponts sent in Miquel, then the Cité, then the Pont de Champs swarmed with the rioters. Thence along the north bank of the river, and up the routed temple, the people still yelling, muttering, singing, sarera, and shouting, a la l'interne, a la l'interne. Sir Percy Blakney and his little band of followers had found the pont-nouffe in the adjoining streets practically deserted. A few stragglers from the crowd, soaked through with the rain, their enthusiasm damped, and their throats choked with the mist, were sulkily returning to their homes. The desultory group of six sans-calos attracted little or no attention, and Sir Percy boldly challenged every passer-by. The way to the routed temple, citizen, he asked once or twice, or, have they hung the traitor yet? Can you tell me, citizeness? A grunt or an oath were the usual replies, but no one took any further notice of the gigantic coal-heaver in his ragged friends. At the corner of one of the cross-streats between the routed temple and the routed archives, Sir Percy Blakney suddenly turned to his followers. We are close to the rabble now, he said in a whisper, and speaking in English. Do you all follow the nearest stragglers, and get as soon as possible into the thickest of the crowd? We'll meet again outside the prison, and remember the seagull's cry. He did not wait for an answer, and presently disappeared into the mist. Every a few stragglers, hangers on to the multitude, were gradually coming into view, and the yells could be distinctly heard. The mob had evidently assembled in the great square outside the prison, and was loudly demanding the object of its wrath. The moment for cool-headed action was at hand. The scarlet penpernel had planned the whole thing, but it was for his followers and for those whom he was endeavoring to rescue from certain death to help him heart and soul. They relayed's grasp, tightened on Juliet's little hand. Are you frightened, my beloved? He whispered. Not whilst you were near me, she murmured in reply. A few more minutes walk up the roux-day archives, and they were in the thick of the crowd. Sir Andrew Folkes, Lord Anthony Dewhurst, and Lord Hastings, the three Englishmen, were in front. They relayed and Juliet immediately behind them. The mob itself now carried them along. A motley throng they were, soaked through with the rain, drunk with their own baffled rage, and with the brandy which they had imbibed. Everyone was shouting, the women louder than the rest. One of them was dragging the length of rope, which might still be useful. Sarira, sarira, ala-lenten, ala-lenten, las trete. And they relayed, holding Juliet by the hand, shouted lustily with them, Sarira. Sir Andrew Folkes turned and laughed. It was rare sport for these young bucks, and they all entered into the spirit of the situation. They all shouted, ala-lenten, eking and encouraging those around them. They relayed and Juliet felt the intoxication of the adventure. They were drunk with the joy of their reunion, and seized with the wild, mad, passionate desire for freedom and for life, life and love. So they pushed and jostled on in the mud, followed the crowd, sang and yelled louder than any of them. Was not that very crowd the great bulwark of their safety, as well have sought for the proverbial needle in the haystack, as for two escaped prisoners in this mad, heaving throng. The large open space in front of the temple prison looked like one great, seething black mass. The darkness was almost thick here. The ground was like a morass, with inches of clayy mud, which stuck to everything, whilst the sparse lanterns hung to the prison walls beneath the portico, threw practically no light into the square. As the little band composed of the three Englishmen and of Dayer Laid, holding Juliet by the hand, emerged into the open space, and they heard a strident cry, like that of a sea-mew thrice repeated, and a hoarse voice shouting from out the darkness. M'fois, I'll not believe that the prisoners are in the temple now. I believe, friends, citizens, that we have been fooled once more. The voice, with this strange, unaccountable accent, which seemed to belong to no province of France, dominated the almost deafening noise. It penetrated through, even into the brandy-sodden minds of the multitude, for the suggestion was received with renewed shouts of the wildest wrath. Like one great, living, seething mass, the crowd literally bore down upon the huge and frowning prison, pushing, jostling, yelling, the women screaming, the men cursing, it seemed as if that awesome day, the 14th of July, was to have its sanguinary counterpart tonight, as if the temple were destined to share the fate of the best steel. Amidst their leader's orders, the three young Englishmen remained in the thick of the crowd. Together with Dayer Laid, they contrived to form a sturdy rampart round Juliet, effectually protecting her against rough buffettings. On their right, towards the direction of M'nilmonton, the unused cry and intervals gave them strength and courage. The foremost rank of the crowd had reached the portico of the building, and, with howls and snatches of their gutter song, were loudly clamoring for the guardian of the grim prison. No one appeared. The great gates with their massive bars and hinges remained silent and defiant. The crowd was becoming dangerous, whispers of the victory of the Bastille five years ago, engendered thoughts of pillaging of arson. Then the strident voice was heard again, R.D. The prisoners are not in the temple. The doltes have allowed them to escape and now are afraid of the wrath of the people. It was strange how easily the mob assimilated this new idea. Perhaps the dark, frowning block of massive buildings had overawed them with this peaceful strength. Perhaps the dripping rain and oozing clay had damped their desire for an immediate storming of the grim citadel. Perhaps it was merely the human characteristic of a wish for something new, something unexpected. Be that as it may, the cry was certainly taken up with a marvelous, quick change of rapidity. The prisoners have escaped, and the prisoners have escaped. Some were for proceeding with the storming of the temple, but they were in the minority. All along, the crowd had been more inclined for private revenge than for marshal deeds of valor. The Bastille had been taken by daylight. The effort might not have been so successful in a pitch black night such as this, when one could not see one's hand before one's eyes, and the drizzling rain went through to the marrow. They've got through one of the barriers by now, suggested the same voice from out the darkness. The barriers, the barriers, came in sheep-like echo from the crowd. The little group of fugitives and their friends tightened their hold on one another. They had understood at last. It is for us to see that the crowd does what we want, the Scarlet Pimpernel had said. He wanted it to take him and his friends out of Paris, and by God he was like to succeed. Juliet's heart, within her, beat almost choking. Her strong little hand gripped day-relades fingers with the wild strength of a mad exultation. Next to the man to whom she had given her love in her very soul, she admired and looked up to the remarkable and noble adventurer, a high-born and exquisite dandy, who with grime-covered face and strong limbs encased in filthy clothes, was playing the most glorious part ever enacted upon the stage. To the barriers, to the barriers! Like a herd of wild horses driven by the whip of the herdsmen, the mob began to scatter in all directions. Not knowing what it wanted, not knowing what it would find, forgetting the very cause and object of its wrath, it made one gigantic rush for the gates of the great city through which the prisoners were supposed to have escaped. The three Englishmen in day-relade, with Juliet well protected in their midst, had not joined the general onrushes yet. The crowd in the open place was still very thick. The outward branching streets were very narrow. Through these the multitude, scampering, hurrying, scurrying, like a human torrent let out of a horror-pull, rushed down a headlong towards the barriers. Up the route to Rigo to the Belleville Gate, the Rude Fies, and the route to Schumann Bay, towards Poppincourt, they ran, knocking each other down, jostling the weaker ones on one side, trampling others underfoot. They were all rough, coarse creatures, accustomed to these wild Bouskalons, ready to pick themselves up again after any number of falls, whilst the mud was slimy and soft to tumble on, and those who did the trampling had no shoes on their feet. They rushed out from the dark open place, these creasers of the night, into streets darker still. On they ran, on, on, now in thick, heaving masses, anon and loose, straggling groups, some north, some south, some east, some west. But it was from the east that came the seagulls' cry. The little band ran boldly towards the east. Down the Rude La République they followed their leader's call. The crowd was very thick here. The Bérieure Menil Montant was close by, and beyond it was the cemetery of Père Lachaise. It was the nearest gate to the temple prison, and the mob wanted to be up and doing, not just spend too much time running along the muddy streets and getting wet and cold, but to repeat the glorious exploits of the 14th of July, and capture the barriers of Paris by force of will rather than force of arms. And this rushing mob, the four men, who Juliet and their midst, remained quite unchallenged, mere units in an unruly crowd. In a quarter of an hour, Menil Montant was reached. The great gates of the city were well guarded by detachments of the National Guard, each under command of an officer, twenty strong at most. What was that against such a throng? Who had ever dreamed of Paris being stormed from within? At every gate to the north and east of the city there was now a rabble some four or five thousand strong, wanting it new not what. Everyone had forgotten what it was that caused him or her to rush on so blindly, so madly, towards the nearest barrier. But everyone knew that he or she wanted to get through that barrier, to attack the soldiery, to knock down the captain of the guard, and with a wild cry every city gate was stormed. Like one huge, wind-tossed wave, the populace on that memorable night of fructador broke against the cordon of soldiery that vainly tried to keep it back. Men and women drunk with brandy and exultationed, shouted couturse Juliet, and amidst curses and threats demanded the opening of the gates. The people of France would have its will. Was it not the supreme lord and ruler of the land, the arbiter of the fate of this great, beautiful and maddened country? The National Guard was powerless. The officers in command could offer but feeble resistance. The desultory fire, which in the darkness and the pouring rain did very little harm, had the effect of further infuriating the mob. The drizzle had turned to a deluge, a veritable, heavy summer downpour, with occasional distant claps of thunder and incessant sheet-lining, whichever in a non and lumened with its weird, fantastic flash, this heaving throng, these begrimed faces, crowned with red caps of liberty, these witch-like female creatures with wet, straggly hair, and gaunt, menacing arms. Within half an hour the people of Paris was outside its own gates. Victory was complete. The guard did not resist. The officers had surrendered. The great and mighty rabble had had its way. Exultant, it swarmed around the fortifications and along the terrain bouge which it had conquered by its will. But the downpour was continuous. And when victory came satiety, satiety coupled with wet skins, muddy feet, tired, wearied bodies, and throats parched with continual shouting. At Menille Montaigne, where the crowd had been thickest, the temper's highest, and the Yale's most strident, they're now stretched before this tired, excited throng, the peaceful vastness of the cemetery at Peirée Lachaise. The great alleys of somber monuments, the weird cedars with their fantastic branches, like arms of a hundred ghosts, quelled and awed these hooting masses of degraded humanity. The silent majesty of the city of the dead seemed to frown with withering scorn on the passions of the sister city. Instinctively the rabble was cowled. The cemetery looked dark, dismal, and deserted. The flashes of lightning seemed to reveal ghost-like processions of the departed heroes of France, wandering silently amidst the tombs. And the populace turned with a shutter away from this vast place of eternal peace. From within the cemetery gates there was suddenly heard the sound of a sea-mew calling thrice to its mate. And five dark figures, wrapped in cloaks, gradually detached themselves from the throng, and one by one slipped into the grounds of Peirée Lachaise through that break in the wall, which is quite close to the main entrance. Once more the seagulls cry. Those in the crowd who heard it shivered beneath their dripping clothes. They thought it was a soul in pain risen from one of the graves, and some of the women, forgetting the last few years of godlessness, hastily crossed themselves, and muttered an invocation to the Virgin Mary. Within the gates all silent and at peace, the sodden earth gave forth no echo of the muffled footsteps, which slowly crept towards the massive block of stone, which covers the graves of the immortal lovers. Abelard in the Louise. CHAPTER 30 CONCLUSION There is but little else to record. History has told us how, shame-faced, tired, dripping, the great, all-powerful people of Paris quietly slunk back to their homes, even before the first cock-crow in the villages beyond the gates acclaimed the pale streak of dawn. Belong before that, even before the church bells of the great city had told the midnight hour, Sir Percy Blakeney and his little band of followers had reached the little tavern which stands close to the farthest gate of Peirée Lachaise. Without a word, like six silent ghosts, they had traversed the vast cemetery and reached the quiet hostelry, where the sounds of the seething revolution only came, attenuated by their passage through the peaceful city of the dead. English gold had easily purchased silence and goodwill from the half-starved keeper of this wayside inn. A huge traveling chase already stood in readiness, and four good Flanders horses had been pawing the ground impatiently for the past half-hour. From the window of the chase, old patronel's face, wet with anxious tears, was peering anxiously. A cry of joy and surprise escaped day or late in Juliet, and both turned, with the feeling akin to all, towards the wonderful man who had planned and carried through this bold adventure. "'Nay, my friend,' said Sir Percy, speaking more especially to day or late, if you only knew how simple it all was, gold can do so many things, and my only merit seems to be the possession of plenty of that commodity. You told me yourself how you had provided for old patronel. Under the most solemn assurance that she would meet her young mistress here, I got her to leave Paris. She came out most bravely this morning in one of the market carts. She is so obviously a woman of the people, that no one suspected her. As for the worthy couple who keep this wayside hotel, they have been well-paid, and money soon procures a chase in horses. My English friends and I, we have our own passport, and one for Madame Musel Juliet, who must travel as an English lady with her old nurse, patronel. There are some decent clothes and breadiness for us all in the inn. A quarter of an hour in which to don them, and we must be on our way. You can use your own passport, of course. Your arrest has been so very sudden that it is not yet been canceled. We have an eight-hour start of our enemies. They'll wake up tomorrow morning to guide, and find that you have slipped through their fingers. He spoke with easy carelessness, and that slow drawl of his, as if he were talking airy nothings in a London drawing room, instead of recounting the most daring, most colossal piece of effuntery the adventurous brain of man could conceive. Day relay could say nothing. His own noble heart was too full of gratitude towards his friend to express it all in a few words. And time, of course, was precious. Within the prescribed quarter of an hour the little band of heroes had doffed their grimy, ragged clothes, and now appeared dressed as respectable bourgeois of Paris, en route for the country. Sir Percy Blakeney had done the livery of a coachman of a will to do house, whilst Lord Anthony Dewhurst wore that of an English lackey. Five minutes later day relayed had lifted Juliet into the traveling chase, and in spite of fatigue, of anxiety, and emotion, it was a measurable happiness to feel her arm encircling his shoulders in perfect joy and trust. Sir Andrew Faulks and Lord Hastings joined them inside the chase. Lord Anthony sat next to Sir Percy on the box, and whilst the crowd of Paris was still wondering why it had stormed the gates of the city, the escaped prisoners were born along the muddy roads of France at breakneck speed northward to the coast. Sir Percy Blakeney held the reins himself. With his noble heart full of joy, the gallant adventurer himself drove his friends to safety. They had an eight-hour start, and the League of the Scarlet Pempernel had done its work thoroughly, while provided with passports and with relays awaiting them at every station of fifty miles or so. The journey, though weary some, was free from further adventure. A luave, the little party embarked on board Sir Percy Blakeney's yacht, The Daydream, where they met Madame Day relayed in Annier. The two ladies, acting under the instructions of Sir Percy, had, as originally arranged, pursued their journey northwards to the popular seaport town. Amy A.'s first meeting with Juliet was intensely pathetic. The poor little cripple had spent the last few days in an agony of remorse whilst the heavy traveling chase bore her farther and farther away from Paris. She thought Juliet dead, and Paula prayed to despair, and her tender soul ached when she remembered that it was she who had given the final deadly stab to the heart of the man she loved. Hers was the nature born to abnegation, I, and one dessin to find bliss therein, and when one glance in Paul Dayerlade's face told her that she was forgiven, her cup of joy at seeing him happy beside his beloved was unalloyed with any bitterness. It was in the beautiful, rosy dawn of one of the last days of that memorable fructidor, when Juliet and Paul Dayerlade, standing on the deck of the Daydream, saw the shores of France gradually receding from their view. Dayerlade's arm was round his beloved, her golden hair, run by the breeze, brushed lightly against his cheek. Madonna, he murmured, she turned her head to him. It was the first time that they were quite alone, the first time that all thought of danger had become a mere dream. One had the future in store for them in that beautiful, strange land to which the graceful yacht was swiftly bearing them. England, the land of freedom, would shelter their happiness and their joy, and they looked out towards the north, where lay still hidden in the arms of the distant horizon, the white cliffs of Valbion, whilst the mist even now was wrapping in its obliterating embrace the shores of the land where they had both suffered, where they had both learned to love. He took her in his arms. My wife, he whispered, the rosy light touched her golden hair. He raised her face to his, and soul met soul in one long, passionate kiss.