The next day was the day of the extraordinary hurricane which spread affright through various regions of France, where there was want and woe enough before to shake the courage and perplex the judgment of rulers, and to appal the hearts of the ruled. The timid had long been inquiring how the national burdens were to be borne for the future, and the popular discontents much longer soothed. When this dreadful tempest came, extinguishing the light of day like an eclipse, changing the aspect of the scenery like an earthquake, and convulsing the atmosphere like a hurricane, mere timidity became deepened into a superstitious horror, and the powers of hell were thought to be let loose against the devoted land. Few could wonder much at this who knew the people in their state of ignorance and hardship, and who witnessed the ravages of the storm. The morning had risen fair and bright, though cold, from the change of wind which Antoine had predicted. The clouds soon began to gather, with an appearance of unusual blackness; but this did not prevent the country people from setting out for church, and making their way thither in defiance of the rising blasts. When assembled, however, they found it perilous to remain under the shelter of a roof which threatened to fall in upon them; and they rushed out into the road, where, carefully avoiding the neighbourhood of trees, they supported one another during the dreadful hour that the storm lasted. Cries of grief and despair broke from them at every step as they returned homewards. Drifts of hail stopped up their path. The corn-fields were one vast morass. The almond groves were level with the ground; and of the chestnut woods nothing remained but an assemblage of bare poles. The more exposed vineyards were so many quagmires, and many dwellings were mere heaps of ruins. All who witnessed were horror-struck at the conviction of general, immediate, pressing want; and the more thoughtful glanced forwards in idea to the number of seasons that must pass away before all this damage could be repaired. Not a few, in the midst of their own distress, however, jested on the fate of the marquis’s partridges, and consoled one another with the certainty that it would be long before the lord’s game could trouble them again.