CHAPTER IX
“Who now will guard bewildered youth
Safe from the fierce assault of hostile rage?—
Such war can Virtue wage?”
At the very moment when this order was going to be put in execution, Madame de Fleury was sitting in the midst of the children, listening to Babet, who was reading Æsop’s fable of The old man and his sons. Whilst her sister was reading, Victoire collected a number of twigs from the garden: she had just tied them together; and was going, by Sister Frances’ desire, to let her companions try if they could break the bundle, when the attention to the moral of the fable was interrupted by the entrance of an old woman, whose countenance expressed the utmost terror and haste, to tell what she had not breath to utter. To Madame de Fleury she was a stranger; but the children immediately recollected her to be the chestnut woman to whom Babet had some years ago restored certain purloined chestnuts.
“Fly!” said she, the moment she had breath to speak: “Fly!—they are coming to seize everything here—carry off what you can—make haste—make haste!—I came through a by-street. A man was eating chestnuts at my stall, and I saw him show one that was with him the order from Citoyen Tracassier. They’ll be here in five minutes—quick!—quick!—You, in particular,” continued she, turning to the nun, “else you’ll be in prison.”
At these words, the children, who had clung round Sister Frances, loosed their hold, exclaiming, “Go! go quick: but where? where?—we will go with her.”
“No, no!” said Madame de Fleury, “she shall come home with me—my carriage is at the door.”
“Ma belle dame!” cried the chestnut woman, “your house is the worst place she can go to—let her come to my cellar—the poorest cellar in these days is safer than the grandest palace.”
So saying, she seized the nun with honest roughness, and hurried her away. As soon as she was gone, the children ran different ways, each to collect some favourite thing, which they thought they could not leave behind. Victoire alone stood motionless beside Madame de Fleury; her whole thoughts absorbed by the fear that her benefactress would be imprisoned. “Oh, madame! dear, dear Madame de Fleury, don’t stay! don’t stay!”
“Oh, children, never mind these things.”
“Don’t stay, madame, don’t stay! I will stay with them—I will stay—do you go.”