Now, however, the lofty walls of the fortress of Monsieur le Duc became the rallying place of revolt. Every evening in front of the grand entrance, or upon the fossé bridge, Georges Barrès preached the doctrine of plunder and petroleum. There were in Aramon a certain number of "haves"—let those who heard him see to it that there were ten times that number of "takes"! For what were their brethren shut up there (he pointed to the Loches-like cliff of masonry above him, nearly twice the height of Rochester Castle), and answered, "For retaking their own—for redressing the wrongs of the poor!"
"For plain theft—they stole hens!" proclaimed a voice in the crowd.
"Down with the spy—kill the royalist—dismember the traitor!" howled the mob. And to show their honesty they fell upon a good citizen of Aramon, a respectable apothecary, come there almost at random. He had been discreetly silent. It was not he who had made the outcry, but wore he not a black frock-coat and looked he not sleek and well fed? If he were not a spy, what was he doing there? So they threw him in the Rhône. He was fished out half a mile below, where for a long distance the workshop wall skirts the river. Jack Jaikes did the job with grumbling thoroughness and the man of drugs was brought to with a science and celerity unknown in his own pharmacy.
Having thus asserted its power, the crowd turned with self-approval to listen to its favourite orator.
"Here in Aramon we have a Government, and over it presides a Great Shadow which has been sent us from the Internationale. What did ever the Internationale do for us? Did it stop this war? Did it force back the Germans? You tell me that we owe to this shadow the thirty sous a day on which we starve. What of that? It is a bribe to keep us from taking all they possess. Every day in that Château yonder the silver gleams on the white table-cloth, the red wine mantles in the glass, the champagne foams, and—my great God! you can hear them laughing—from the miserable lairs where your children are clamouring for bread, and your wives are weeping because there is none to give them!"
Now the soul of such crowds is most strange. In all that listening assembly there was no single man who did not know that every word was false. There was a special grant for families, and if any worker's children had not enough bread, it was because the patriot himself had spent the money on absinthe! Every worker knew this. Yet tears started to their eyes, and a deep-throated roar of anger went out against the Government which had arranged such a monstrous iniquity.
"Yonder lie the workshops—the place where money is spun—money such as you have no idea of—millions a week—all the fruit of your toil. Do not break the machinery. We will set it spinning money on our own account—but first we must be quit of Dennis Deventer and his foreign gang. Keller Bey will tell you that they are workers like yourselves—citizens, of equal rights before the Internationale. Why then did they collect together yonder, these brave citizens, these honest workers, these noble revolutionaries? Why are they not walking about these streets and taking their turn at mounting guard? I will tell you. Because they are the guardians of the treasures of the masters—they are keeping locked in Dennis Deventer's safes the millions which have been wrung from you in cruelty and blood and tears!"
Such a roar as went up from that black assembly in which the white caps of women were dotted and the massed blue knots of the National Guard could be seen! It reached the council, drearily debating in the town house, and there was a general desire to adjourn. The air was electric with coming trouble. These duly elected members of the Commune felt themselves caught between two great unknown forces—the Government of Versailles, which was represented by the pushing surveyors of the engineers' corps, the first skirmishers of an army which was certain to come upon them from the north, and this uprising of the idlers and workspoilers of their own kind.
Personally their Socialism was not deep-rooted. They had the national respect for small property-holders, and even if they possessed none themselves, Oncle Jean Marie or Tante Frizade were propriétaires in their own right. When these heritages fell in none of their loving nephews and nieces would fight harder for their share than the red-begirt members of the Commune of Aramon.
Only men like Keller Bey and Gaston Cremieux lived in a world beyond such things—and on the other hand were those who, like Barrès and Imbert, had nothing to gain or to lose however fortune's wheel might turn.