'Delighted,' exclaimed Berthier, standing on the threshold and throwing his arms apart, and raising himself.
'Then begone,' she screamed. 'I will not see you again, I swear, till I have your life. If you come to see me here, I will hide my face from you. Take that to remember me by—go, Gabriel! avenging angel!' She flung the yellow cat in his face. The beast lit upon his cheeks, with every claw extended, screaming with fear, and clinging with all its might, hung there one instant, then dropped, and darting to its mistress bounded to her shoulder and set up its back and tail, hissing and swearing.
Madame Plomb saw her husband recoil,—saw lines of crimson streak his face, heard his yell of pain, followed by a volley of blasphemous oaths, then the door was shut with a bang, double locked, and she was left to silence and reflection.
Gabrielle in the meantime had been hurried by the jailer to the gates. As she issued from them into the street, she saw that it was full of people in a condition of intense excitement. Every eye was directed towards the towers, with a look of threatening hate. A deep murmur rose from the throng, not loud, but intensely earnest.
Corporal Deschwanden caught Gabrielle's arm. He had been waiting for her.
'Is all right?' he asked, anxiously.
'I fear not,' she answered; and then told him what had occurred.
'Herr Je!' exclaimed the soldier; 'that will never do. If Berthier knows of your plan, he will take effectual means to stop its execution. What is to be done? You are not safe. Potts tausend! I must think of it.'
That evening, an express was sent to Versailles, and at day-break the Marquis de Sade was removed to Charenton. He was the last prisoner to leave the Bastille. He had been confined for horrible crimes of impurity. Being only a moral, not a political offender, he had been treated with a consideration never met with by those who had roused the suspicions of Government. He was allowed the walk on the towers interdicted to others, was permitted to carpet and hang his room with arras, and to have excellent meals, which he paid for out of his well-stocked purse.
That cry of his through the extemporised speaking-trumpet echoed from one end of Paris to the other, and, false as was the statement he made to the crowd about himself, it was terribly true about his fellow-prisoners. That cry roused Paris. The trumpet was but of tin, but it pealed the death-knell of the fortress that had stood four hundred years.