“Ah, you villain!” he yelled, as the poor father had done.
And with clenched fists he marched up to the German, who smiled coldly and held his revolver to his eyes. He was just going to shoot him . . . but at that instant Desnoyers fell to the floor, knocked down by those who were leaping up the stairs. He received many blows, the heavy boots of the invaders hammering him with their heels. He felt a hot stream pouring over his face. Blood! . . . He did not know whether it was his own or that of the palpitating mortal slowly dying beside him. Then he found himself lifted from the floor by many hands which pushed him toward a man. It was His Excellency, with his uniform burst open and smelling of wine. Eyes and voice were both trembling.
“My dear sir,” he stuttered, trying to recover this suave irony, “I warned you not to interfere in our affairs and you have not obeyed me. You may now take the consequences of your lack of discretion.”
He gave an order, and the old man felt himself pushed downstairs to the cellars underneath the castle. Those conducting him were soldiers under the command of a petty officer whom he recognized as the Socialist. This young professor was the only one sober, but he maintained himself erect and unapproachable with the ferocity of discipline.
He put his prisoner into an arched vault without any breathing-place except a tiny window on a level with the floor. Many broken bottles and chests with some straw were all that was in the cave.
“You have insulted a head officer!” said the official roughly, “and they will probably shoot you to-morrow. Your only salvation lies in the continuance of the revels, in which case they may forget you.”
As the door of this sub-cellar was broken, like all the others in the building, a pile of boxes and furniture was heaped in the entrance way.
Don Marcelo passed the rest of the night tormented with the cold—the only thing which worried him just then. He had abandoned all hope of life; even the images of his family seemed blotted from his memory. He worked in the dark in order to make himself more comfortable on the chests, burrowing down into the straw for the sake of its heat. When the morning breeze began to sift in through the little window he fell slowly into a heavy, overpowering sleep, like that of criminals condemned to death, or duellists before the fatal morning. He thought he heard shouts in German, the galloping of horses, a distant sound of tattoo and whistle such as the battalions of the invaders made with their fifes and drums. . . . Then he lost all consciousness of his surroundings.
On opening his eyes again a ray of sunlight, slipping through the window, was tracing a little golden square on the wall, giving a regal splendor to the hanging cobwebs. Somebody was removing the barricade before the door. A woman’s voice, timid and distressed, was calling repeatedly:
“Master, are you here?”