"The gate of St. Cloud has been forced by the fire of our batteries. General Douai precipitated his command into the breach. At this moment he is occupying Paris with his troops. Ladmirault and Clinchant are moving in support.
"A. Thiers.."
The message was false in detail, though true in the main fact. A full week's hard fighting in the streets of Paris lay between the army of Versailles and the end of the revolt.
But none of those who in the Mairie of Aramon-les-Ateliers bent their heads over the flimsy message doubted for a moment that the day of their own doom was at hand. They began to think of the best means of reaching the most convenient frontier--Italy, Switzerland, or Spain. Some were limited in their choice, owing to previous troubles with the justice of otherwise eligible countries. But all, without exception, knew that the game was up and resolved on flight. Unfortunately the receipts of the Quartier St. Jacques had not come up to expectation, and a general blankness overspread the company till Anton Chanot hinted at a final scheme which would make them rich enough to live years in the safe seclusion of Barcelona or Genoa. He did not tell all he had planned at once. He wished to take only a chosen few into his inner secrets, but he could not make a raid which would involve an armed attack upon the soil of a hostile department without the whole force at this disposal.
Chanot therefore flashed before the eyes of the committee promises of boundless loot to be attained by attacking the rich foundation of St. André on the hill over Aramon le Vieux. The church was an ancient one and the treasury had long been one of the sights of the neighbourhood--gold cups, patens, ciboires, boxes of inlaid thirteenth-century work, and the jewelled pastoral staff of the saint himself, ablaze with precious stones--all were there, and of a value which would make them rich men, and render their exile, so long as they chose to remain, agreeable and easy.
They must refrain, Chanot added, from any disturbance or looting in the town itself. If the monks fought, care must be taken of the school, and the safes in the économe's office, and the treasure of the golden vessels in the church must alone be touched.
Marseilles was under military law and had been declared in a state of siege. The troops of General Espivent de la Villeboisnet occupied the city and constituted a barrier not to be passed. No rogue's paradise could be found in Marseilles under martial law.
The expedition into the department of Deux Rives, and the attack upon St. André, was therefore their last chance, and it was a great one, of a comfortable exile.
Chanot and Chardon counted their adherents who could be trusted, who numbered about thirty, all proven men--not an old "Red," a theoretic Communard or a National Guard among them. They were chary even of any whose families were connected with the Small Arms Factory, for the business must be gone about with the most perfect secrecy.
Meantime Chanot took Chardon more fully into his confidence.