Louis could not make himself heard, and when at last he was able to do so for a moment, the cry for the Marquis began and drowned him. It seemed to him a very desirable thing that Gilbert should indeed return quickly, for he had never seen the villagers so out of hand. As they shouted they brandished here a scythe-blade, here a pitchfork lit up by the glare of a few torches and the broad fan of light from the door. At last the Vicomte began to get annoyed. He shouted to a domestic: “Go, for God’s sake, and ask Monsieur le Curé to come. . . . Ah, here he is! Father, can you stop this racket?” Apparently M. des Graves had that power. The noise had slackened the instant that he appeared; now, as he held up his hand, it died down to an undertone. “My children!” he said a little reprovingly, and then to Louis: “Now speak to them, my son, and tell them that Gilbert will soon be back. No—it is your place to do it, not mine.” And the young man, after glancing at him, went forward to the topmost step. “My friends, be patient!” he urged. “Monsieur le Marquis will soon be here.” And he added with a half-smile: “I can guess why you want him, can’t I?” A hundred voices asserted that he could. Finally, in answering queries as to whether the Marquis would consent to lead them, and in shaking the hands held up to grasp his own, Louis was more or less pulled down the steps into a sea of passion in which a hostile swimmer would have had little chance of his life. “Monsieur le Vicomte, you will come, too?” shouted a group of young men, rosaries round their necks and no more than stout sticks in their hands. “Monsieur Louis has learnt soldiering,” explained a voice. “He was in our King’s guard. That’s what we want, a soldier!” It was all very hot and breathless and uncomfortable, and the Vicomte soon contrived to disengage himself and to return to his vantage post on the steps. Hence, being now more successful in making himself heard, he invited any one who wished to enter the house, and ordered such food and drink as it contained to be brought out to the invaders. No one would come in, but when the latter arrangement was at last carried through a measure of quiet fell upon the excited throng, as, like the Israelites, they ate and drank standing and prepared for departure. It was now ten o’clock; the rain had ceased, and there was the promise of a feeble moon. The sound of the tocsin, presage of the unusual, came dinning to the ears of the young man and the old as they stood by the door and looked at the scene, ready and waiting for the principal actor. Why did he not come? The priest, who had been down in the throng, was aware of the tiniest pang of fear. And Louis seemed to know it.