And the voices outside continued to cry tumultuously: "Fra Hervé! Fra Hervé! We can not get in! The door is bolted from within. The devil take it! Open to us, Fra Hervé! We come to help you!"
"Quick! Bring levers and an axe—or, better yet, let us break in the door!" the voice of the Marquis of Montbar was again heard to say. "Run for a company of my soldiers! We shall wait here. Hurry up!"
"Oh! Oh!" observed the Franc-Taupin, after silently listening to the observations from the other side of the door, to which he had glued his ears. "The royalists are inviting themselves in large numbers to the banquet that I am preparing for them! And why not? When there is broth for five guests, there is enough for ten, if the housekeeper is economical. Just wait, my friends! My broth is cooking! It is so toothsome that a single spoonful will do the work for twenty or thirty persons."
"Master Josephin, here are the implements and the little machine," said Serpentin in a low voice, as he drew out of a bag that he brought suspended from his shoulders and handed over to the Franc-Taupin a heavy iron box about one foot long and six inches high and wide. The box, filled full with powder, was pierced in the center by a narrow slit through which a sulphured fuse was inserted. The Franc-Taupin took in his hands the redoubtable petard, examined the structure of the door minutely, and after a moment's reflection inserted the iron box with no little difficulty under the lower hinge. The Franc-Taupin then rose, and patting the apprentice upon the cheek said to him in a low voice:
"Tell me, my lad, why do I place the little machine so tightly between the floor and the hinge?"
Serpentin reflected for a moment, scratched his ear, and then reeled off his answer after the fashion of a boy who recites his lesson:
"Master, you place the little machine in that way in order that, when it blows up, it may tear up the door along with the hinge; the torn up hinge will tear up the masonry in which it is fastened; the torn up masonry will tear up a part of the wall; and the torn up wall will bring down the ceiling. As a result of all this the debris will roll down upon the St. Bartholomew lambkins, whose flesh will have been scratched by the flying fragments of the little machine which will have been hurled in all directions, and will have whistled and ricocheted like artillery balls."
"Wise—wise answer, my lad," observed the Franc-Taupin pinching the apprentice's ear with a satisfied look. "Continue to profit by my lessons in this manner, and you will become an accomplished miner, and you then will be able to contribute handsomely towards the scattering into fragments of a goodly number of papists and royalists. Now, off with you, hurry down the stone steps, and wait for me at the bottom."
Serpentin obeyed. The Franc-Taupin knelt down at the threshold of the door, took from his belt a horn of powder and spilt along the floor a sufficient quantity to quite cover up the fuse. Thereupon, retreating on his knees, he laid down a long train of powder. The train skirted Fra Hervé's corpse and ended at the opening of the trap door, down which he descended. Josephin stopped on the stair so that only his head appeared above the level of the flooring. Listening in the direction of the door, behind which he could hear a confused noise of voices, he said to himself: "The Catholic vermin is swarming behind the door, but I still have time to cut my twenty-fifth notch."
He took the little stick which he habitually carried hung on a string from a buttonhole of his jacket, pulled out his dagger, and cutting into the wood, the aged soldier said: