"Blow us all up!" echoed Gildas, terror-stricken, and he bounded away from the bale, while Sacrovir himself placed the candle on the table. "What should blow us up?"
"The cartridges, my lad, which these bales contain. You must look out what you are doing."
"Cartridges!" ejaculated the amazed Gildas, stepping still further back, and more and more overcome with fear, while his employer took out two guns from the chest which he had just opened, and his son drew from the same receptacle several braces of pistols, muskets and carbines.
At the sight of these weapons, and knowing himself surrounded by cartridges, the head of Gildas swam, he grew pale, and leaning against a table again muttered to himself:
"A puzzling house, this! Its bales of linen are filled with cartridges! Its looking glasses turn into guns and muskets and pistols!"
"My good Gildas," said Lebrenn, addressing him affectionately, "there is no danger whatever in unpacking these arms and munitions. That is all I want you to do. After you have done that, you may, if you prefer, either go down into the cellar, or climb up into the garret, where you can remain in all security until after the battle. Because, I might as well let you know, there will be fighting going on with the break of day. Once you are ensconced in the hiding place that you may choose, all I warn you against is sticking your nose either out of the sky-light or out of the air-hole when the firing has begun—not infrequently bullets fly astray."
The linendraper's words—stray bullets, fighting, firing—completely plunged Gildas into a vertigo that is easily imaginable. He had not expected to find in the St. Denis quarter a stronghold of belligerency. Other events soon crowded upon each other, all conspiring to increase the terror of Gildas. Fresh clamors, at first distant, drew perceptibly nearer and nearer, and finally seemed to explode with such fury that not only Lebrenn and his son, but Gildas also, ran to the shop door in order to ascertain what was happening on the street.
CHAPTER IX.
POPULAR JUSTICE.
When, attracted by the growing tumult, Monsieur Lebrenn, his son and Gildas reached the door of the shop, the street was already filled with a large crowd.
Windows were flying open and inquisitive heads appeared at them. Presently a flickering reddish glare lighted the house fronts. A vast and swelling flood of people was rushing by. Some preceded, others accompanied the sinister illumination. The uproar grew more and more violent. Now and then, rising above the din, the angry cries could be heard: