He sent the brothers Pique-en-Bois to open the windows in the stories above and below. On the eastern façade of the building he had observed a large ivy, old and withered, about the color of tinder, which entirely covered one side of the bridge, framing the windows of the three stories, and thought that this ivy would do no harm. After bestowing a last glance on everything, the Imânus and his men left the châtelet and returned into the keep. Double locking the heavy iron door, he examined attentively this immense and awe-inspiring lock, nodded approvingly at the sulphur-match, passed through the hole he had drilled, which was henceforth the only channel of communication between the tower and the bridge. This match, starting from the round room, passed beneath the iron door and entered under the arch, coiled snake-like over the spiral stairs, crept across the floor of the corridor below, and ended in the pool of tar under the dry heath. The Imânus had calculated that it would take a quarter of an hour from the time this sulphur-match was lighted from the interior of the tower, to set on fire the pool of tar under the library. Having completed and reviewed all these preparations, he carried the key of the iron door to the Marquis de Lantenac, who put it in his pocket. Every movement of the besiegers must be watched; so with his cowherd horn in his belt he stood sentinel in the watch-tower of the platform on the summit of the tower. While keeping his eye on both the forest and the plateau, he had beside him in the embrasure of the watch-tower a powder-horn, and a canvas bag filled with good-sized balls and old newspapers, which he tore up to make cartridges. When the sun rose, it revealed in the forest eight battalions, with sabres at their sides, cartridge-boxes on their backs, and fixed bayonets, ready for the assault; on the plateau a battery with caissons, cartridges, and boxes of grape-shot; within the fortress nineteen men loading their muskets, pistols, and blunderbusses, and three children asleep in their cradles. [Footnote 1: A corruption of the word "patriot."--Tr.] [Footnote 2: Rustics.] [Footnote 3: Equal to the occasion.] [Footnote 4: Stave, cask.] [Illustration: The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew. 096] BOOK III. I. THE MASSACRE OF SAINT BARTHOLOMEW. I. [Illustration 097] The children awoke. The little girl was the first to open her eyes. The waking of children is like the opening of flowers; and like the flowers, these pure little souls seem to exhale fragrance. Georgette, the youngest of the three, who last May was but a nursing infant, and now only twenty months old, lifted her little head, sat up in her cradle, looked at her toes, and began her baby-talk. A ray of light fell upon the crib; it would have been difficult to say which was the rosier,--Georgette's foot, or the dawn.