"Very well! Let it be so! Let them dare!" cried out Colombaik. "We are ready for those noblemen and clergymen, for all the tonsured fraternity and their bishop to boot!"
"And if the women take a part, as at the insurrection of Beauvais," exclaimed Simonne, clenching her little fists, "I, who have no children, shall accompany my husband to battle, and the dame of Haut-Pourcin will pay dear for her insults. 'Pon the word of a Picardian woman, I shall slap her insolent face as dry as an Easter wafer!"
The good baker was smiling at the heroic enthusiasm of his pretty wife when the peal of a large bell was heard from a distance. Fergan, his family and neighbors, listened to the sonorous and prolonged sound with a tremor of joy.
"Oh, my friends!" said Fergan with emotion, "do you hear it sound for the first time from the belfry of our Commune? Do you hear it? To-day it summons us to a feast; to-morrow it will call us to the meeting of the council where we attend to the business of the city; some day it will give us the signal for battle. A belfry of the people! Your voice of bronze, at last awakening ancient Gaul from her slumber, has given the signal for the insurrection of the Communes!"
While the quarryman was speaking, all the bells of the churches of Laon began to chime in with the peals of the belfry. The deafening clangor soon dominated and completely drowned the isolated tinkling of the communal bell. This rivalry of bell-ringing was no accident, nor yet a token of sympathy. It was an affront, premeditated by the bishop and his partisans. They realized the patriotic importance that the communiers of Laon attached to the inauguration of the symbol of their emancipation, and decided to mar the festivity.
"Oh, those friars! Always spiteful and hypocritic until the day when they deem themselves strong enough to be merciless!" exclaimed Colombaik. "Have your way, ye black-gowns! Ring at your loudest! The canting bells of your churches shall not silence our communal belfry! Your bells ring mankind to servitude, to imbecility, to the renunciation of their dignity; the belfry gathers them to fulfil their civic duties and to defend freedom! Come, father, come! The bourgeois militia must by this time be assembled around the pillars of the market-place. You are constable and I a captain-of-ten. Let's start. Do not let us be waited for. Liberty or death!"
CHAPTER III.
EPISCOPALS AND COMMUNIERS.
Fergan put on his casque, and presently giving his arm to Joan the Hunchback, as Colombaik gave his to Martine, and Quatre-Mains to his wife Simonne, the three couples sallied forth from Colombaik's tannery, followed by his apprentices, who, likewise were members of the Commune.
The rivalry of the bells continued undiminished. At intervals the bells of the churches intermitted their clangor, no doubt in the hope of having silenced the belfry. Its sonorous and regular peal proceeded, however, unchecked, and the clerical clangor was renewed with redoubled fury. The incident, puerile in seeming, but serious at bottom, produced a deep resentment towards the party of the nobles. It was a long distance from the tannery of Colombaik to the market-place, the rendezvous of the bourgeois militia. Large crowds blocked the streets, moving towards the communal Town Hall, that had been three years building and was recently finished. Only the casting and hanging of the bell in its campanile had retarded the inauguration of the monument so dear to the townsmen. More than once did Joan turn back to look, not without uneasiness, in the direction where her son followed with Martine, together with Quatre-Mains and Simonne. Joan's apprehensions were well founded. A large number of the domestics of the noble and clerical households were dispersed among the crowd, and from time to time hurled some vulgar insult at the communiers, upon which they would immediately take to their heels. Knights, clad in full armor, crossed and re-crossed the streets, their fists upon their hips, their visors up, and casting disdainful and defiant looks upon the people. These provocations increased particularly in the vicinity of the rendezvous of the militia, at the head of which, and armed as if for battle, the Mayor of Laon and his twelve Councilmen were to march in procession to the Town Hall in order to inaugurate by a solemn session the meeting of these magistrates, held until then at the house of John Molrain, the Mayor.
The market-place of Laon, like that of all the cities of Gaul, consisted of large stalls, where, on Saturdays, occasionally also on other days of the week, the merchants, leaving their everyday shops, exposed their products for sale. Outsiders and the suburb population, who drew their supplies from Laon, thus found at one place all that they might want. But on that day the market served as the gathering place for a goodly number of bourgeois and artisans, who had armed themselves to join the procession and impart to it an imposing appearance. In case of war, every communier was obliged to furnish himself with a pike and an axe, or club, at the first call from the belfry, and hasten to the rendezvous. As a rule the crowd seemed indifferent to the insolent gibes and provocations of the episcopals. The communiers, at least a majority of them, felt themselves strong enough to despise the challenges to riot. A few, however, yielded to a certain sense of fear for the iron-clad nobles, who were accustomed to the use of weapons, and with whom the Laonese, who owed their enfranchisement to a contract and not to an insurrection, had not yet had occasion to measure themselves. Finally and moreover, hardly freed from their rude and base servitude, many of the townsmen still preserved, involuntarily, a certain habit, if not of respect, yet of dread for people whose cruel oppression they had so long been subject to. Shortly, the captains-of-tens, commanding squads of tens, and the captains-of-hundreds, commanding companies of hundreds, all under the command of Fergan, who had been chosen constable, or chief of the militia, drew up their ranks along the stalls of the market-place. Colombaik was a captain-of-ten, his body was complete except for one lad called Bertrand, the son of Bernard des Bruyeres, a rich bourgeois who, three years previous, was assassinated in the cathedral by Gaudry, bishop of Laon.