For, indeed, this storm--an historical one--that was to break, seemed so inspired an invasion of order by the prophets of anarchy, as that it appeared to impress under its banner, as it advanced, all predestined agents (however individually insignificant) of that social and religious havoc of which its ruinous course was to be typical. Ned, as he toiled on the first of the hill, looked up at the sky. It was as the wall of a nine-days’ furnace--his eyes could not endure the terror of the light. Nor, from his position, could they see how, far down on the horizon, a mighty draft of cloud was slipping over the world, like the sliding lid of a shallow box, shutting into frightful darkness a panic host of souls. Here it was better than in the town; but the heat still was terrific. He was yet undecided as to whether to go on or rest where he had paused, when a carter, with a tilted waggon, came up the road behind him. For the weird opportuneness of it, this might have been Kühleborn himself. The man, as it appeared, was bound for the farther side of Méricourt. Ned, seeing the chance offered him to view from ambush, accepted his unconscious destiny, struck his bargain, and slipped under the canvas. Kühleborn cried up his team. The sick day turned, moaning among its distant trees like a delirious troll. * * * * * * * * The lodestone to all this dark force of electricity that came up swiftly over the verge of the world, rising from the caldron of the East, where inhuman things are brewed! Was it an iron cross standing high in the roadway of a populous bridge; a cross that seemed to crane its gaunt neck looking ever over a wandering concourse of heads to the horizon, gazing, like St Geneviève, for the cloudy coming of an Attila; a cross held up, as it were, before the towers of Paris--a Retro Satanas to the menacing shapes that, emerging from chaos, threatened the ancient order, the ancient dynasty, the ancient religion;--the cross, indeed, on the bridge of Charenton? For in Charenton that day was pregnant conference, was a famous banquet to Marseillais and Jacobin, was sinister tolling of the death-knell of royal France. And what if the bell swung without a clapper! The very air it displaced, reeling from its onset like foam from a prow, caught the whisper of death in its passing, and carried it on to the cross.