"Was that all?"
"Certainly."
"Then do you think I had better tell you more?" said Aline unsteadily.
Marthe looked at her with a certain pity in her glance.
"You did not learn prudence in an easy school," she said slowly, and then added: "No, better not; and besides, there 's not much need—it's all plain enough to any one who has eyes."
Dangeau's letter of about this date to Danton contained a little more information than that he sent his wife.
"The scoundrels have thrown off the mask at last," he wrote in a vigorous hand, which showed anger. "Yesterday Précy fought under the fleur-de-lys. Well, better an open enemy, an avowed Royalist, than a Girondist aping of Republican principles, and treachery under the surface. France may now guess at what she has been saved by the fall of the Gironde. They hope for reinforcements here. Our latest advices are that Sardinia will not move. As to Autichamp, he promises help, and instigates plots from a judicious distance; but he and his master, Artois, feel safer on any soil but that of France, and I gather that he will not leave Switzerland at present. Losses on both sides are considerable. To give the devil his due, Précy has the courage of ten, and we never know when he will be at our throats. Very brilliant work, those sallies of his. I wish we had half a dozen like him."
On the ninth of October Lyons fell, and the fiat of the Republic went forth. "Lyons has no longer a name among cities. Down with her to the dust from which she rose, and on the bloodstained site let build a pillar bearing these warning words: 'Lyons rebelled against the Republic: Lyons is no more.'"
Forthwith terror was let loose, and the town ran blood, till the shriek of its torment went up night and day unceasingly, and things were done which may not be written.
At this time Dangeau's letters ceased, and it was not until Christmas that news of him came again to Rancy. Then he wrote shortly, saying he had been wounded on the last day of the siege, and had lain ill for weeks, but was now recovered, and had received orders to join Dugommier, the Victor of Toulon, on his march against Spain. The letter was short enough, but something of the writer's longing to be up and away from reeking Lyons was discernible in the stiff, curt sentences.