Charles lifted up his finger in token of silence, and rose from his seat, saying,
“Your reproaches impel me to a confidence with which I did not intend to disturb your tranquillity. Follow me.”
Marguerite did so, suspecting that she might soon wish to retract some things which she had said. Her husband led her to his wine-cellars, which were at the back of the house, separated from it by a small court, from which there was an opening through a wide gateway into the street. The few servants who remained at this slack time on the premises were employed about the fruit-store. The keys of the wine-cellars were kept by a confidential clerk, who was always on the spot, and was the only person besides Charles who now ever entered the place.
“Remember,” said Charles to his wife, as he put the key into the first lock; “remember that you have brought this disclosure upon yourself. This will enable you to bear it well. The best thing we can hope is that you may have to bear it long. If calamity should shortly release you from apprehension, you will see that the hopefulness you complain of in me does not arise from levity. Pierre, bring the lantern, and lock us in.”
Marguerite felt half-stifled between her fear of what was to come next, and the close air of the cellars. Her husband held up the light, and she saw that the door had been newly plated with iron. The next thing she was shown was a long train of gunpowder winding among the stores of wine and brandy.
“O, Charles!” she cried; “are you going to blow us up?”
“Not ourselves, or the house either,” he replied. “You see here is not enough to do any great mischief;—only enough to bring down the ceiling upon my wine-casks, and spoil the wine. There are no buildings over this cellar, you know; so there is no danger to human life.”
He then explained that, finding how invariably the worst excesses of the mob were to be traced to their being plied with drink, it had occurred to him to engage all the wine-merchants of Paris in an agreement to refuse, on some pretence or other, to sell wine or spirits to any but private gentlemen who wanted it for their own consumption. Some agreed, and others did not; and these latter, when they had sold all their stock, and could, from the scarcity, get no more, had maliciously whispered in the mobs the secret with which they had been entrusted. One after another of the merchants, knowing the danger to which they were exposed, had fallen off from the agreement; and Charles, whose stock was the largest now remaining in the city, was left almost alone in his determination to refuse the means of intoxicating the mob. He was aware that his wine was longed for, and his life threatened. He could not remove his stock to a distance, for his premises were evidently watched by spies. He had reason to believe that, on the first occasion when the people were to be excited to an extraordinary act of violence, they were to be brought hither to burst open his stores, and be plied with brandy and wine. He did not choose to be thus made the means of promoting riot and murder, and determined on blowing up his stock, if matters came to extremity. On the first alarm of the approach of a mob, he should fire the train, and bring down the roof; making a pit of what was now level ground. Or, if he should be absent, Pierre knew how to do it.
“But how?” asked Marguerite, with as much voice as she had left. “Must it not be fatal to the one who fires?”
“I trust not,” he replied; “though, if it were, my purpose would stand. It is better to sacrifice one life thus, than to make murderous fiends of many thousands. But, look here, this is our contrivance.”