family, and of causing the arrest of their parents, and the suspicion soon became a certainty. They posted themselves beneath the porte-cochere, gun in hand, intending to kill Malin as soon as he made his appearance; but the countess lost her head; she imagined her house in ashes and her daughter assassinated, and she blamed the young men for their heroic defence and compelled them to desist. It was Laurence who opened the door slightly when Malin summoned the household to admit him. Seeing her, the representative relied upon the awe he expected to inspire in a mere child, and he entered the house. To his first words of inquiry as to why the family were making such a resistance, the girl replied: “If you really desire to give liberty to France how is it that you do not protect us in our homes? They are trying to tear down this house, monsieur, to murder us, and you say we have no right to oppose force to force!”
Malin stood rooted to the ground.
“You, the son of a mason employed by the Grand Marquis to build his castle!” exclaimed Marie-Paul, “you have let them drag our father to prison—you have believed calumnies!”
“He shall be released at once,” said Malin, who thought himself lost when he saw each youth clutch his weapon convulsively.
“You owe your life to that promise,” said Marie-Paul, solemnly. “If it is not fulfilled to-night we shall find you again.”
“As to that howling populace,” said Laurence, “If you do not send them away, the next blood will be yours. Now, Monsieur Malin, leave this house!”
The Conventionalist did leave it, and he harangued the crowd, dwelling on the sacred rights of the domestic hearth, the habeas corpus and the English “home.” He told them that the law and the people were sovereigns, that the law was the people, and that the people could only act through the law, and that power was vested in the law. The particular law of personal necessity made him eloquent, and he managed to disperse the crowd. But he never forgot the contemptuous expression of the two brothers, nor the “Leave this house!” of Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne. Therefore, when it was a question of selling the estates of the Comte de Cinq-Cygne, Laurence’s brother, as national property, the sale was rigorously made. The agents
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