"Citizen Lebrenn, you play the people false! You are hiding here an aristocrat, Marchioness Aldini—there she stands—" and Lehiron designated Victoria with his weapon. "She is one of the harpies of the Austrian party. She sat last night at the board of a royalist council-feast. You are conspiring with her against the Nation. You will deliver the jade to us, and also all the papers in your house, which are claimed by justice. Quick! Or your lives shall pay the penalty."
"To the lamp-post with the noblewoman! Live the Nation! Death to the traitors!" cried Lehiron's band of jackals, and brandishing their pikes and swords they poured into the room. But the giant, held in awe by the pistols trained upon him and not anxious to have recourse to force except in the last extremity, waved back his brigands with a gesture and addressed himself again to John:
"Deliver up the noblewoman and the papers, and your life will be spared. But be quick about it."
"Helas! My God! Have pity on us!" murmured Madam Lebrenn, overcome with terror and throwing her arms about her blind old husband.
"Out of here, you scoundrels!" was the answer of John Lebrenn. Lehiron waved his hand to his gang of bandits and cried:
"Forward! To the lamp-post with the traitors!"
As the valiant leader of the cut-throats gave the command, he himself leaped to one side and ducked his head to escape the pistol-fire of Franz of Gerolstein. But the latter no less quickly changed the aim of his weapon, and pulled the trigger. The giant flew back almost his full length, flung out his arms, dropped his cutlass, tumbled to his knees, and rolled over, face down, on the floor, almost mortally wounded.
All of a sudden, above the tumult was heard a cry of pain from Madam Lebrenn:
"Oh, the wicked child! He is biting me!"
John turned, and while his two companions fell upon their adversaries, ran to his mother and found her in a desperate struggle with little Rodin. The latter, faithful to the tuition of his dear god-father, and hoping to profit by the turmoil, was about to make off with the bundle of manuscripts. Madam Lebrenn seized hold of him to take them away, and the little rat had bitten her savagely on the hand. To snatch from the Jesuit's god-son the treasured legends, seize him by the slack of his pantaloons, and send him rolling ten paces away, was the work of an instant for young Lebrenn. The terrible child, wriggling and sliding like a snake between the legs of John's companions, gained the stairway and escaped with his discomfited accomplices.