“Fly! they are coming to arrest you,” he cried.
“Why?”
“I don’t know yet; but there’s a warrant against you.”
The words were greeted with general laughter.
“We are innocent,” said the young men.
“Innocent or guilty,” said the abbe, “mount your horses and make for the frontier. There you can prove your innocence. You could overcome a sentence by default; you will never overcome a sentence rendered by popular passion and instigated by prejudice. Remember the words of President de Harlay, ‘If I were accused of carrying off the towers of Notre-Dame the first thing I should do would be to run away.’”
“To run away would be to admit we were guilty,” said the Marquis de Simeuse.
“Don’t do it!” cried Laurence.
“Always the same sublime folly!” exclaimed the abbe, in despair. “If I had the power of God I would carry you away. But if I am found here in this state they will turn my visit against you, and against me too; therefore I leave you by the way I came. Consider my advice; you have still time. The gendarmes have not yet thought of the wall which adjoins the parsonage; but you are hemmed in on the other sides.”
The sound of many feet and the jangle of the sabres of the gendarmerie echoed through the courtyard and reached the dining-room a few moments after the departure of the poor abbe, whose advice had met the same fate as that of the Marquis de Chargeboeuf.