"Have done!" he cried to them, in his coarse, brutal voice. "Have we come here only to yell? And do you, Seigneur, give up Gargouf, and you shall go free. Otherwise, we will burn the house, and all in it." "You villain!" I said. "We have guns, and----" "The rats have teeth, but they burn! They burn!" he answered, pointing triumphantly, with the axe he held, to the flaming buildings. "They burn! Yet listen, Seigneur," he continued, "and you shall have a minute to make up your minds. Give up Gargouf to us to do with as we please, and the rest shall go." "All?" "All." I trembled. "But Gargouf, man?" I said. "Will you--what will you do with him?" "Roast him!" the smith cried, with a fearful oath; and the wretches round him laughed like fiends. "Roast him, when we have plucked him bare." I shuddered. From Cahors help could not come for another hour. From Saux it might not come at all. The doors below me could not stand long, and these brutes were thirty to one, and mad with the lust of vengeance. With the wrongs, the crimes, the vices of centuries to avenge, they dreamed that the day of requital was come; and the dream had turned clods into devils. The very flames they had kindled gave them assurance of it. The fire was in their blood. _A bas la Bastille! A bas les tyrans!_ I hesitated. "One minute!" the smith cried, with a boastful gesture--"one minute we give you! Gargouf or all." "Wait!" I turned and went in--turned from the smoky glare, the circling pigeons, the grotesque black figures, and the terror and confusion of the night, and went in to that other scene scarcely less dreadful to me; though only two candles, guttering in tin sockets, lit the landing, and it borrowed from the outside no more than the ruddy reflection of horror. The women had ceased to scream and sob, and crowded together silent and panic-stricken. The old men and the lad moistened their lips, and looked furtively from the arms they handled to one another's faces. Mademoiselle alone stood erect, pale, firm. I shot a glance at the slender little figure in the white robe, then I looked away. I dared not say what I had in my mind. I knew that she had heard, and---- She said it! "You have answered them?" she muttered, her eyes meeting mine. "No," I said, looking away again. "They have given us a minute to decide, and----" "I heard them," she answered shivering. "Tell them." "But, Mademoiselle----" "Tell them never! Never!" she cried feverishly. "Be quick, or they will think that we are dreaming of it." Yet I hesitated--while the flames crackled outside. What, after all, was this rascal's life beside hers? What his tainted existence, who all these years had ground the faces of the poor and dishonoured the helpless, beside her youth? It was a dreadful moment, and I hesitated. "Mademoiselle," I muttered at last, avoiding her eyes, "you have not thought, perhaps. But to refuse this offer may be to sacrifice all--and not save him."