“The best thing you can do is to close all the shutters and windows looking to the front in the upper storey, and to place chests of drawers and bedding against them, so that if bullets are fired they will do no harm.”
“That we will do, my son,” said Madame La Touche, rising from her seat; and she hurried off, accompanied by Sophie.
La Touche at once summoned his maître d’hôtel and the other servants.
“My friends,” he said, “I have no intention of letting the insurgents destroy my château, as they have done those of other persons, and I will trust to you to defend it to the last.”
A party of Englishmen would have cheered. They, however, merely said, “Oui! oui! monsieur; we are ready to do what you tell us.”
Among the servants came Larry. I told him what we expected would happen, and what he was to do.
“Shure we’ll be after driving the ‘spalpeens’ back again,” he answered. “I was little thinking that we should have this sort of fun to amuse us when we came to France.”
We lost no more time in talking, but immediately set to work to shut all the doors on the ground floor, and to nail pieces of timber and strong planks against them. The windows were closed with such materials as could be obtained. There were more forthcoming than I expected; and La Touche acknowledged that he had laid in a store some time before.
He then summoned the maître d’hôtel and two other servants, and led the way—accompanied by Larry and me—down a steep flight of stone steps to a vault beneath the house. Opening the door of what was supposed to be a wine cellar, he showed us a stand of twenty muskets, with pistols and pikes, several casks of powder and cases of bullets. Larry, at once fastening a belt round his waist, and tucking a couple of muskets under each arm, hurried off, the servants following his example. La Touche and I each took as many more, and returned to the hall.
His first care was to place his men two and two at each of the parts of the building likely to be attacked.