umbering atmosphere. Silvere listened
attentively, unable to tell, however, what were those tempest-like
shouts, for the hills prevented them from reaching him distinctly.
Suddenly a dark mass appeared at the turn of the road, and then the
"Marseillaise" burst forth, formidable, sung as with avenging fury.

"Ah, here they are!" cried Silvere, with a burst of joyous enthusiasm.

Forthwith he began to run up the hill, dragging Miette with him. On the
left of the road was an embankment planted with evergreen oaks, up which
he clambered with the young girl, to avoid being carried away by the
surging, howling multitude.

When he had reached the top of the bank and the shadow of the brushwood,
Miette, rather pale, gazed sorrowfully at those men whose distant song
had sufficed to draw Silvere from her embrace. It seemed as if the
whole band had thrust itself between them. They had been so happy a few
minutes before, locked in each other's arms, alone and lost amidst the
overwhelming silence and discreet glimmer of the moon! And now Silvere,
whose head was turned away from her, who no longer seemed even conscious
of her presence, had eyes only for those strangers whom he called his
brothers.

The band descended the slope with a superb, irresistible stride. There
could have been nothing grander than the irruption of those few thousand
men into that cold, still, deathly scene. The highway became a torrent,
rolling with living waves which seemed inexhaustible. At the bend in the
road fresh masses ever appeared, whose songs ever helped to swell the
roar of this human tempest. When the last battalions came in sight the
uproar was deafening. The "Marseillaise" filled the atmosphere as
if blown through enormous trumpets by giant mouths, which cast it,
vibrating with a brazen clang, into every corner of the valley. The
slumbering country-side awoke with a start--quivering like a beaten drum
resonant to its very entrails, and repeating with each and every echo
the passionate notes of the national song. And then the singing was
no longer confined to the men. From the very horizon, from the distant
rocks, the ploughed land, the meadows, the copses, the smallest bits
of brushwood, human voices seemed to come. The great amphitheatre,
extending from the river to Plassans, the gigantic cascade over which
the bluish moonlight flowed, was as if filled with innumerable invisible
people cheering the insurgents; and in the depths of the Viorne,