The Blacksmith's Hammer, or The Peasant Code Part 8

The butcher's threats, directly alluding to Mademoiselle Plouernel and her aunt, were heard by Serdan, Salaun Lebrenn and his son, who, having returned to the square, and being driven by the current of the ma.s.s, found themselves pushed in the direction of the prison. Vainly had they sought to keep their promise to Monsieur Tilly of protecting the life of John De Witt. When the venerable man left his house under the guidance of the jail grenadier, Serdan and his friends requested him to allow them to escort him. He consented. Together they crossed several narrow and quiet streets and presently an almost deserted lane. When, at the end of the same, they arrived before a gate that barred further pa.s.sage and opened upon a corridor leading into the castle, the grenadier declared to the companions of John De Witt that they could go no further, his orders being to allow admission only to the Grand Pensionary of Holland. John De Witt urged his friends to withdraw, clasped their hands, and entered alone, the door being unlocked, then closed and re-locked after him by the grenadier who was furnished with a key. John De Witt was taken without delay to his brother, and there discovered the trap that was laid for him. His brother had not sent for him, and was greatly alarmed at what he considered a most inopportune visit, in view of the general popular excitement, and the riot at the prison gate. A heartrending scene took place between the two brothers.

John sought to induce his brother to leave the prison, the doors of which, he argued, had to be opened to him, seeing he was sentenced to banishment. Cornelius declined, on the ground that he had appealed from the decree of proscription. He insisted that the judges p.r.o.nounce him either innocent or guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. To quit the prison would be to accept the sentence which put a blot upon his name, and against which he protested. Unable to induce his brother to flee, John De Witt declared he would not leave him, and would share his fate.

While this debate, a struggle of fraternal generosity, was proceeding in the prison of Cornelius, two officers and four militiamen of the Blue Flag company forced themselves into the chamber in which the two brothers were conversing, and a.s.sailed them with violent threats.

Alas! son of Joel; I shall let an eye-witness of that lamentable event narrate it in his own words, and let us transmit the report to our descendants:

"The officers and the militiamen found Cornelius De Witt lying on his couch in a morning gown, and his brother seated near the head of the bed reading to him out of the Bible. The Grand Pensionary sought to awaken some sense of humanity in the maddened men who entered the room. They only redoubled their threats, and compelled the two brothers to rise and leave the room, saying they were to be taken to the place where criminals are executed. The De Witts embraced each other tenderly at the head of the stairs which led out of the castle, and bade each other their last adieus. Cornelius De Witt, who, in consequence of the torture, was very weak, descended leaning upon his brother's arm. The latter, preserving a most heroic calmness in sight of so imminent a danger, exhorted in kind language those who led him and his brother not to commit so great an iniquity as they threatened to be guilty of. 'My friends,' he said to them as he continued to descend the stairs, sustaining his brother, 'we are innocent, we are not traitors to the Republic; take us wherever you please, but take us to judges.' 'March!

March!' the officers answered, brutally pus.h.i.+ng him forward and causing him to trip and stumble over the lowest steps of the staircase; 'You will soon know where you are taken to, traitors!'"

The iron gate that served as a defense to the castle had been forced open. A portion of the mob penetrated into the outer yard which separated the square from the facade of the castle, and where a low stoop led up to an ogive door. The shadow, into which the vault of the door threw the inside, allowed but an indistinct view of the lowest steps of the staircase by which John and Cornelius De Witt descended.

The instant the two brothers appeared at the top of the stoop, whither they were pushed by the militiamen of the Blue Flag, yells of hate and vengeance broke forth from all sides.

"There they are!" "We got them both!" "Death to the De Witts!" "Death to the traitors!" "Death to the French party!"

Separated from the two victims, and hemmed in by a compact ma.s.s of people, Serdan, Salaun Lebrenn and Nominoe were as impotent to bring the slightest help to Cornelius and John as to flee from the spectacle that they were about to witness. In that situation, and justly fearing to be recognized as Frenchmen and ma.s.sacred on the spot, they controlled their grief and indignation, and only exchanged looks of despair as the tragedy was enacted before their eyes.

The moment the two De Witts, John sustaining his brother, stepped out upon the stoop, one of the militiamen raised his musket, holding it by the barrel, and dealt Cornelius De Witt a furious blow upon the head, shouting at the same time:

"Die, traitor! The blood, shed by the soldiers of Louis XIV, shall fall upon your head! Death to all the accomplices of the French King!"

Stunned by the blow, Cornelius staggered and reeled. Instantly the butcher seized him by the hair, and dragged him down to the bottom of the stoop, brandis.h.i.+ng his knife. John De Witt rushed forward to his brother's help, but before he could descend two steps, a notary, Van Soenen by name, barred his way, and, exclaiming: "Die, traitor! Your friends the French murdered our prisoners at Swamerdam! Die, traitor, renegade!" hurled his pike into the face of the Grand Pensionary, transfixing it.

Blinded by the blood that spurted from his wound, John De Witt dropped on one knee. He immediately endeavored to rise, crying: "My brother! My brother!" But at that moment a man named Van Valen gripped him by the throat, threw him to the ground, and planting his foot upon De Witt's chest, discharged his pistol into the head of the prostrate man, loudly vociferating: "Die, wretch! You betrayed your country! So shall all the accomplices of Louis XIV die! Death to all papists!"

The corpse of John De Witt was dragged under the Buytenhoff Arcade beside his brother's, whom the butcher killed. The mob pounced like tigers upon the two bodies, riddled them with shots, stripped them naked, mutilated them beyond recognition--and, Oh, frightful reprisals that the two martyrs were the innocent victims of! each act of sacrilegious profanation was accompanied with a thousand imprecations intended to recall the atrocities committed by the soldiers of Louis XIV, who crowned their acts of pillage, of incendiarism, of iniquities perpetrated upon women, and of murder, by outraging even the corpses which they stripped of their funeral robes, and deprived of burial!

Finally, the shapeless remains of the two great citizens were hung from the gibbet where common malefactors were executed.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FLIGHT.

Salaun Lebrenn, his son, and their friend, the witnesses to the ma.s.sacre, stood shuddering with terror, when they were suddenly aroused by the cries of several voices: "And now for Tilly!" "Death to Tilly!"

"To the sack of his house!" "Death to the traitors!" "Death to the friends of the French!"

"Vengeance and reprisals!" howled the most infuriated of the mob. "To Tilly's house! to Tilly's house! Sack the house of Tilly!"

The three Frenchmen, who were, until then, wedged in the compact ma.s.s of the mob, and compelled, despite themselves, to witness the sight of the popular fury, succeeded by dint of vigorous efforts in cleaving their way in a diagonal line across the press, and finally freed themselves entirely, while the ma.s.s of people took the direction of the house of Monsieur Tilly.

Madam Tremblay and Abbot Boujaron, faithful to the recommendations of Monsieur Tilly, kept the curtains of the windows closed, and abstained from showing their faces. Standing near one of the embrasures, and slightly parting the curtain, the Abbot sought to obtain a glimpse of what went on upon the street, and cast furtive looks upon the square.

"Abbot!--no imprudence!" cried the Marchioness.

Mademoiselle Plouernel sat steeped in revery at the opposite end of the parlor. Her mind dwelt indignantly upon the odious designs that her own family had dared to plot, and in which so ign.o.ble a role was a.s.signed to her. She remained an utter and indifferent stranger to all that was happening within and without the house.

"Well, Abbot," inquired Madam Tremblay, "do you see anything on the square?"

"Marchioness!" cried the Abbot, turning pale and stepping back from the window, "we are lost! A mob of men armed with pikes and axes is just turning into the square. They yell: 'Death to the French!' Listen!

Listen! Do you hear them? The mob is running this way, howling and vociferating!"

Indeed, at that moment, a formidable clamor that drew ever nearer was heard on the square, and distinctly could be made out the furious cries:

"Death to Tilly!" "Death to the French!" "Sack the house!"

"They are coming to murder Tilly!" stammered the Abbot, livid with terror. "It is done for us! We are lost!"

"Abbot, you are losing your senses," replied the Marchioness endeavoring to allay her own alarm. "Matters are not at such an extremity."

"Madam, do you not hear those furious cries: 'Vengeance and reprisals!'"

asked Mademoiselle Plouernel. "These people are coming to take vengeance upon us for the atrocities committed by the troops of your master, at the instigation of your infamous Catholic clergy!"

The danger grew ever more threatening. Hurried steps were heard in the house, where the frightened servants were running about crying out to one another and precipitately and noisily closing and bolting the main door on the ground floor. The door, though thick and strong, and studded with iron nails, could not long resist the a.s.sailants. Already it shook under the repeated blows of axes and the b.u.t.ts of muskets, while a volley of stones, thrown from the street, broke with a crash the window-panes in the parlor. The shattered windows allowed the clamor from without to reach the parlor with distinctness. "My sister was violated and disemboweled by the soldiers of Louis XIV," cried the butcher in his stentorian voice; "Vengeance and reprisals! French women are housed in Tilly's residence! Fire upon the door and windows! We will get in! Ma.s.sacre and fury!"

The sound of a discharge of musketry fire followed almost instantly upon the butcher's words. The house seemed to rock to its very foundations.

The fusilade continued uninterrupted. At the same time the main door, already half broken down, was attacked with renewed blows of axes, and a lever was applied to its hinges.

Suddenly the ceiling of the parlor shook with the vibrations of heavy blows given with iron maces and by dint of which the main street door finally fell in with a great crash. The vociferations of the a.s.sailants, who irrupted into the house, reached the ears of the Abbot, the Marchioness and Mademoiselle Plouernel. They stood petrified with terror. At that instant a little door, that communicated with, and was concealed by the drapery of the parlor flew open.

"The a.s.sa.s.sins are here!" stammered the Marchioness, almost dead with fright. "We are lost! Mercy! Mercy!"

"We are saved!" cried Bertha of Plouernel, as she recognized in the new arrivals Serdan and his two friends. "These are our liberators!"

The uproar and the distinct rush of hurrying and tumultuous steps announced that the a.s.sailants were mounting the staircase. Serdan ran to the princ.i.p.al door of the parlor, closed and double barred it.

"Mademoiselle," he said hurrying back to the young lady and pointing to her the issue through which he had just entered, "flee by that door--the corridor leads to a concealed staircase."

Already the parlor door cracked under the repeated blows from without.

Bertha, seized with a sort of vertigo, followed Serdan mechanically; the Abbot pushed the Marchioness before him, and disappeared after the two women in the corridor. The hall was left empty.

The parlor door, attacked with heavy axes, was rent and dashed into splinters, giving a pa.s.sage to the butcher, who rushed in followed by his band. The Frenchwomen had vanished, but he saw the little door through which they escaped hurriedly closed. He ran forward to open it, or break it down with his fists. It resisted his efforts. Not having had time to bolt the little door from the inside, Nominoe had placed his back against it, and held it closed with his feet firmly planted against the side-walls. Finding himself unable to force his pa.s.sage, the butcher called out for a hatchet in order to break down the obstacle that now barred his progress.

"We can do better!" exclaimed one of the a.s.sailants. "Let us discharge our muskets against the door. The b.a.l.l.s will pierce the wood and kill the man. Death to the traitors! Death to the French!"

Three muskets were lowered and fired.

While these incidents were following one another with the rapidity of thought, the fugitives had crossed the corridor and descended the steps of a masked staircase that led to a little inside yard, which opened upon a narrow lane, into which a number of dark and vaulted pa.s.sages, common in The Hague, ran out. Serdan, being long familiar with the entrances to Monsieur Tilly's residence, and bent upon endeavoring to s.n.a.t.c.h Mademoiselle Plouernel from the frightful peril that threatened her, the means of escape offered by these devious pa.s.sages, of which the a.s.sailants knew nothing, occurred to him. Through the same secret pa.s.sages the servants of Monsieur Tilly's household now took flight.

"Monsieur," said Bertha to Salaun in a fainting voice, "I implore you, acquaint me with the name of the man to whom I owe my life and honor!

Give me the name of my generous deliverer!"

"Nominoe Lebrenn, my son, a mariner of the port of Vannes as is his father, mademoiselle."

At that moment the detonations of the shots, fired upon the door which Nominoe defended, resounded through the narrow corridor which the fugitives had just left. The reverberations were immediately followed by the distant and expiring cry of the young mariner: "Adieu, father! Flee!

Flee!"

"Unhappy boy! They have killed him!" cried Salaun Lebrenn in a heartrending voice. "They have killed my dear Nominoe!"