A squire was unlucky enough at this juncture to crawl up to the ladder-top, drawn thither by idle curiosity, and to miss his footing there. The fowling-piece in his hand struck the coping of the gateway and went off. A yell as of two thousand maniacs pealed heavenward. "They have fired on the sovereign people," rose in a mighty shout; and with one accord the sea that had been lashing quietly towered in a huge wave, encompassed the chateau and overwhelmed it. It was one of those sudden things which, like the phenomena of earth, strangles the breath and leaves men palsied. When the ground rocks and yawns in fissures, and the mountains tumble and the forests fall in heaps, lookers on can only marvel. The luckless denizens of Montbazon had scarcely time for that. The gun discharged by accident acted as a signal. For an instant the gates groaned and rattled under a rain of missiles. The walls were black with human atoms who swarmed and buzzed like flies, coming on and on in myriads. The seigneurs huddled mechanically together in a small knot, and fired one futile volley ere they were trodden under foot. A young fellow, bleeding from a deep gash inflicted by a scythe, leaned for support against an angle, and in answer to a question as to the brothers' whereabouts, pointed in the direction of the dining-hall. Ere his life-blood ebbed away, he saw with dimmed sight three wavering figures tossed hither and thither, like corks upon a boiling stream--was aware of a whirl of feet ascending a winding stair, amid yells of "à la lanterne,"--of three writhing human creatures dangling at the ends of ropes. Jean Boulot, hieing back from Lorge, was alarmed by a strange light and a curious sound of menace like the distant shouting of vast crowds. When he reached the open, from whence the chateau was visible, he pulled his horse up sharply. The concourse he had left so quiescent, were dancing like fiends around a mighty bonfire. Montbazon was aflame from end to end. Its wooden tenements had caught, and blazed like touchwood. As he gazed tranquilly upon the lurid spectacle, the ropes that held three black masses swinging aloft in space were licked by forked flames and parted, and the figures dropped into the furnace that seethed white hot below. "God's will be done!" Jean muttered. "They have well merited their fate." Winter and spring went by. The king was dead; the queen lingered yet in the Conciergerie. Jocund summer-time had come round again, and a quiet group clad in deep mourning enjoyed the balmy air in the secluded moat-garden of Lorge. A tall lady on whose still beautiful face were ploughed hard lines of suffering, was contemplating with a subdued smile of settled sadness, the romps of two children on the green. "Angelique!" she called in mild reproof, "you must not let them tire you;" whereupon an old lady sitting close at hand leaning on an ebony crutch said, "Let be. It does me good to hear Angelique laugh again after that awful day."