“Come,” said the officer. “No matter where the information came from—get you and all your company into the carts outside—and you can sleep on a plank to-night in the prison of the Temple, and to-morrow morning you can give an account of yourself to the Grand Prieur de Vendôme.”
There was, of course, a frightful uproar. The soldiers seized the children and carried them toward the carts, the youngsters screaming with terror, especially the cobbler’s boy, who was the biggest boy, and yelled the loudest—the parents shouting, crying and protesting. There was a terrible scene.
As soon as the commotion began, I walked toward the old serving-man. The confusion was great, but in the midst of it I heard a calm, imperious little voice saying:
“Peter, come and take me home at once.”
It was the young Mademoiselle Capello, standing on the edge of the stage platform. She was very white, but perfectly composed.
Old Peter took her arm respectfully, when up stepped a brawny soldier—one of those stout fellows from Normandy—and catching Mademoiselle Capello by the other arm, said rudely:
“She must go, too!”
I thought old Peter would have dropped dead. As for the young girl, she fixed her eyes intrepidly upon the soldier, but she was trembling in every limb.
I could have felled the man with a single blow, but I saw that to make a brawl with a common soldier about Mademoiselle Capello would be fatal. Old Peter then managed to gasp out: