"They are mad," I answered. "They are mad! Yet it is a chance; and we have few! If I can get to them before they break in, I may do something. One moment, Mademoiselle; screen the light, will you?" Some one did so, and I turned feverishly and caught hold of the curtain. But Gargouf was before me. He seized my arm, and for the moment checked me. "What is it? What are you going to do?" he growled. "Speak to them from the window." "They will not listen." "Still I will try. What else is there?" "Lead and iron," he answered in a tone that made me shiver. "Here are M. le Marquis's sporting guns; they shoot straight. Take one, M. le Vicomte; I will take the other. There are two more, and the men can shoot. We can hold the staircase, at least." I took one of the guns mechanically, amid a dismal uproar; wailing and the thunder of blows within, outside the savage booing of the crowd. No help could come for another hour; and for a moment in this desperate strait my heart failed me. I wondered at the steward's courage. "You are not afraid?" I said. I knew how he had trampled on the poor wretches outside; how he had starved them and ground them down, and misused them through long years. He cursed the dogs. "You will stand by Mademoiselle?" I said feverishly. I think it was to hearten myself by his assurance. He squeezed my hand in a grip of iron, and I asked no more. In a moment, however, I cried aloud. "Ah, but they will burn the house!" I said. "What is the use of holding the staircase, when they can burn us like rats?" "We shall die together," was his only answer. And he kicked one of the weeping, crouching women. "Be still, you whelp!" he said. "Do you think that will help you?" But I heard the door below groan, and I sprang to the window and dragged aside the curtain, letting in a ruddy glow that dyed the ceiling the colour of blood. My one fear was that I might be too late; that the door would yield or the crowd break in at the back before I could get a hearing. Luckily, the casement gave to the hand, and I thrust it open, and, meeting a cold blast of air, in a twinkling was outside, on the narrow ledge of the window over the great doors, looking down on such a scene as few châteaux in France had witnessed since the days of the third Henry--God be thanked! A little to one side the great dovecot was burning, and sending up a trail of smoke that, blown across the avenue, hid all beyond in a murky reek, through which the flames now and again flickered hotly. Men, busy as devils, black against the light, were plying the fire with straw. Beyond the dovecot, an outhouse and a stack were blazing; and nearer, immediately before the house, a crowd of moving figures were hurrying to and fro, some battering the doors and windows, others bringing fuel, all moving, yelling, laughing--laughing the laughter of fiends to the music of crackling flames and shivering glass.