CHAPTER XXI.
THE SPIDERS SPIN

How provoking and how unfair to be called upon to drag out the years of our earthly pilgrimage during so stormy a period as this one! With unexpected bombshells exploding at one's feet, what was the use of sketching elaborate schemes which accident would most likely shiver? The abbé had already been obliged to change his tactics several times in consequence of untoward circumstances, and now from a clearing heaven there rained down missiles whose unexpected proximity sharpened his ire. "Why was I born so late?" he asked himself with muttered curses. "Under Louis XV., le Bien-Aimé, everybody did what they liked, provided that his majesty smiled. And if his own fancy was not thwarted, that monarch must have been much addicted to smiling, for he found the world a pleasant place. And now, just a few years later, there seemed to be not such a thing as a smile left anywhere. They had been so lavishly showered by the bien-aimé and his lotus-eating coterie that the stock was completely exhausted, and humanity had to put up with execrations as a substitute."

Each time that a courier arrived with intelligence of what was passing in the capital, the male occupants of Lorge shuddered, guessing that the news was bad. Bad, forsooth! The ball set a rolling was tearing down the hillside with such velocity that the sight thereof took away the breath.

Old de Vaux, grateful ever to the marquis and his affinity for their treatment of his sciatic nerve, came riding over with crumpled gazettes in his pocket, his eyes goggling in his head. If the whitened locks upon his pate had not been artificial, they would have stood up on end. "What are we all coming to?" was the burthen of his wail. If the world was coming to an abrupt conclusion, why did it not perform a dignified smash and vanish into vacuum in smoke, instead of first permitting that over-rated creation, man, to show what a base thing he was?

Smash! Paris, beautiful Paris, had come to smash. From a paradise it was become a pandemonium where all that was best and noblest was torn by devils' pincers.

Sciatica? Oh, yes. It was charming well, thanks to the delightful and indefatigable pupil of Mesmer and the enlightened marquis. A pair so good as they would certainly be canonized-so would the prophet. Madame and Angelique were as disgusted as the baron, but sent kindest messages to all. Would they allow their patient to unfold the latest budget?

Then the old gentleman would drone out before a long-suffering but apparently appreciative audience the result of his private lucubrations, and pour forth as well those of his lady and of Angelique. The seigneurs, he declared, must select the strongest fortress in the province, arm and victual it, and thus secure from the scum, look out for better times.

Of course, the crescendo of Parisian sinfulness found its echo, of fluctuating intensity, in the provinces. The timorous old baroness and her daughter preferred their garden to possible insult on the roads. Moreover, there was little to be gained by visiting at Lorge now. The marquise since her return from the capital, had been vastly frigid and stand-off-a stuck-up piece of goods. It was certain, now that she had her fabulous possessions in her hands, that a mere country noble's family were too contemptible to touch. It was equally clear that the oaf who was called chevalier had no honourable intentions, and that it would be more than imprudent to place so chaste a specimen as Angelique within reach of his brandy-laden breath. And so it came about that the only neighbours of the fair sex in the vicinity visited less and less at Lorge, and that the old baron when he trotted over on his prad, looked as a matter of course for the society of the mesmerists to whom he owed so much, and ceased to ask to see the chatelaine.

Not understanding her, the baron had always been frightened of Gabrielle-one shade less than of the abbé. Strange! When that gentleman first came among them, the baron and all the booby squires voted him the most charming of acquisitions. Now, somehow, he was to be avoided as much as might be, for his tongue was sharp and his wit scathing, and he was no respecter of persons. The abbé would sometimes take up the old gentleman in his claws, as it were, toy with him as cat does with a mouse, till he was bewildered and breathless; then turn him inside out with a gesture of contempt, and fling him aside. This was terribly disrespectful to a Vaux of Vaux, but it certainly was a fact, whose enormity was only revealed by slow degrees, that the abbé was not averse to treating a Vaux de Vaux (with a thousand quarterings) as if he were no more than a puppet. Having arrived at and digested this stupendous fact, it stood to reason that the baron disliked the abbé as much as he dared; but, at the same time, the counsel of that ghostly man was so worldly-wise; he was so respected by the mesmerists, appealed to by them on every occasion as an oracle, that in moments of startling difficulty such as were now of frequent occurrence, it was only natural that the baron should amble over from Montbazon to crave the oracle's advice.

A budget, indeed! Almost every day was stamped by some inconceivable event. History was making up for casual napping by a spell of feverish haste. A catalogue of years was crowded into weeks. The poor old globe was spinning round so rapidly that it would certainly be shot out of its orbit, to the annihilation of the insects on its surface.

When, six weeks after their arrival in the country, the incidents of the tenth of August reached far Touraine, the cunning abbé had the gazette wherein they were chronicled laid on the table of the marquise, whom he justly calculated would be frozen with horror. That her innocent benefactress should be summoned by destiny in fulfilment of prophecy, to drain so full a cup of bitterness was appalling, and naturally set her friend reflecting upon the darkness of her own horoscope.

The sensitive and haughty queen was indeed humbled; her defenders massacred, her home converted into a shambles.

After the storming of the Tuileries, the populace, blood-drunk, wreaked their insensate fury upon all alike, irrespective of age or sex. The gentlemen-ushers, pages, doorkeepers, even the lowly scullions of the kitchen were, without distinction, butchered. It was impossible to move a yard over the polished floors without treading on a corpse, stripped and horribly mutilated. Every corner of the palace was plundered, its furniture flung out of the window. When there were no more Royalists to kill, the rioters turned upon each other, making the fatal day the fête of carnage and devastation. The mangled bodies of the seven hundred murdered Swiss were covered with those of sans-culottes. It was a carnival of slaughter. On the Place Louis XV., groups of men and women amused themselves by severing the heads of the slain and tearing their flesh like tigers. It was a relief to know that the royal family were safe within the Temple; and yet, for what further suffering had they been rescued? The situation was so alarming that foreign ambassadors left Paris in a body, the last to go milady Sutherland, who stood by Marie Antoinette in her travail till the prison gates were closed on her.

Then came the incident, so often repeated in history, of a hopeless combat with a spirit which, easily raised, it is found impossible to lay. General Lafayette, perceiving, with distress, the results of his own teaching, implored his army to rise in defence of king and constitution, and being met with laughter, fled.

On the second of September-a Sunday, whereon time hung heavy on the hands-the brilliant idea occurred to certain zealous citizens, headed by one Maillard, that it would be fine fun to make hay in the prisons. Were there not the Abbaye, the Carmelites, the Chatelet, La Force, Salpétrière, Bicêtre, all crammed with wicked people who did not approve of sans-culottes? What a delicious amusement would it be for the dull Sunday to teach them how bad they were. With yells, a throng, increasing in volume at each street corner, swept towards the Abbaye-men naked to the waist, with foaming lips and rolling eyes, and arms clotted with gore. Knives and sharp pikes made short but merry work. Recalcitrant maidens who refused to shout "Vive la Nation!" were compelled to drink the blood of their relations. The massacre continued all day and through the night. But why go into the full details of the hideous story? France was become a dangerous lunatic who had beaten and trampled on her keepers.

It was a desperate shock to Gabrielle when she read of the fate of her friend, Louise, Princesse de Lamballe. That ill-starred lady had, as she knew, been imprisoned in La Force; and it was with a thrill that chilled her blood that she perused the details of her murder. Sure so horrible and ferocious a deed had never been done before! The marquise read, in the gazettes cunningly placed by the abbé, with blanched cheek, of how the beautiful favourite of the stricken queen had been dragged to the prison threshold, there to be slain by inches; of how her body was stripped and mutilated and flung in derision on a dung-heap, while her head was borne on a pike with auburn tresses flying, and flourished at the Temple under the window of the royal prisoners. Unhappy Louise! Unfortunate Marie Antoinette! Concerning one the sinister prophecy was accomplished; concerning the other it would be soon. What of the third, which concerned the Marquise de Gange? Morbid fancy, forsooth! No, indeed. Her fate was sealed, like theirs. What must be, must. She had lulled herself in false security.

Since Fate had decreed that the present occupants of Lorge were to live in so unsavoury an era, it behoved the ruling spirit of the group, Monsieur l'Abbé, to extract what advantage he could out of the disadvantages. In the first place, outside events were so terribly engrossing that local gossip and tittle-tattle for the time had lost their charm. The general feeling of insecurity, too, was such that the marquise could be taught without difficulty that this was not the moment for aristocrats to appeal to the Seigneurie. What was a petty bit of jealousy, or even a family misunderstanding, by the side of a massacre of thousands? A protest at such a crisis on so paltry a subject would be justly met with contempt.

Then as History kept plying her shuttle with lightning speed, the abbé shook his head and marvelled, congratulating himself that the great obstacle to his plan had been removed, since time was becoming precious.

For the new will was now an accomplished fact, and lay safe in yonder desk which bore the cypher of the marquis.