“Not as a traitor to you,” he replied. “I have never swerved, even in thought, from my fidelity to you.”
“Talk to me no more of love,” she cried. “I have steeled my breast against all the softer emotions. But we must separate. Those who are engaged to demolish this saintly pile are about to commence their task. Farewell!”
And she quitted the church by a side-door.
A number of priests and friars now entered the fane, and proceeded to remove all the sacred vessels, reliques, and other objects from the sacristy and from the various shrines. The great silver crucifix, and the tall silver candlesticks, were carried away from the altar.
While this was going on, a large band of workmen, armed with pickaxes, shovels, and bars of iron, had set to work to pull down the monuments and open the tombs, and the church resounded with the noise of their implements.
Ere long a great number of ancient coffins were disinterred—some of stone and some of mouldering wood, and from the former the dead were taken. Coffins and corpses were then laid upon litters, and taken out of the church, to be deposited in a more secure spot—the bearers being headed by a procession of priests and monks.
As soon as they were gone, the church, which had thus been despoiled of its treasures and its dead, was given up to the destroyer.
The work of demolition immediately commenced, hundreds being employed in the task, which was superintended by experienced engineers. Gunpowder was used to accelerate the operations, and before morning the reverend and beautiful fabric was little better than a heap of ruins, the roof gone, the pillars in the aisles undermined and thrown down, and the walls demolished. The most determined enemy could not have done the work quicker than it was executed by the patriotic citizens, and they ceased not in their task till the holy pile was razed to the ground. The stones and beams that had composed it were employed in barricading the streets.
As Pomperant and Hugues were in the church when the work of demolition commenced, they were compelled to join in it, and they both laboured as industriously as the rest, till relieved by a fresh party.
When Pomperant escaped from the irksome task imposed upon him by necessity, he found that a multitude of citizens and soldiers were employed in pulling down the bishop's palace. Explosion after explosion shook the house to its foundations, and the walls fell with a tremendous crash.