"Open, in the name of the Republic."
No answer.
Crash! Crash! Blow followed blow upon the door of the old château.
"Again, citizens, once again! Brasseur! bring fagots, we'll fire the old trap. Forgons, take this sledge-hammer in your big hands. At it, man!—we'll soon have the lair of the aristocrats down about their ears. Defour, Haillons, and you others, take up that ash-tree and let it strike in the same place as before."
Amid a pandemonium of shouts and curses the blows continued to rain upon the iron-studded outer door of the château de Rochefort, and the tree, used as a battering-ram, poised upon the shoulders of a dozen men, was dashed forward with a force that made the hinge-bolts start from their sockets and the oaken panels fill the air with splinters.
The besieged had taken refuge in one of the large salons on the second floor. There were only four of them: an old man, a priest, and two women.
"They have nearly forced the outer door," cried old Matthieu Tournay, wiping the perspiration from his brow with trembling hand.
"But the inner one," exclaimed the priest, laying his hand on Matthieu's arm. "How long will that keep them off?"
"They'll break through that easily. Nothing can save us now; we are all lost," replied the old man.
"May the Blessed Virgin preserve us from the monsters," murmured the priest, looking towards the woman.