he ears of a certain
Commissioner of the National Convention, who was accompanying this
regiment to the army of Dumouriez, then in Belgium.

Now it so happened that this Commissioner had meditated making a descent
upon the Chateau on his own account, and he was not minded that any
peasantry should forestall or baulk him in the business which he
proposed to carry out there. Accordingly, he issued certain orders
to the commandant, from which it resulted that a company, two hundred
strong, was immediately despatched to Bellecour, to either defend or
rescue it from the mob, and thereafter to await the arrival of the
Commissioner himself.

This was the company that had reached Bellecour in the eleventh hour,
to claim the attention of the assailants. But the peasants, as we have
seen, were by no means disposed to submit to interference, and this they
signified by the menacing front they showed the military, abandoning
their attack upon the Chateau until they should be clear concerning the
intentions of the newcomers. Of these intentions the Captain did not
leave them long in doubt. A brisk word of command brought his men into a
bristling line of attack, which in itself should have proved sufficient
to ensure the peasantry's respect.

"Citizens" cried the officer, stepping forward, "in the name of the
French Republic I charge you to withdraw and to leave us unhampered in
the business we are here to discharge."

"Citizen-captain," answered the giant Souvestre, constituting himself
the spokesman of his fellows, "we demand to know by what right you
interfere with honest patriots of France in the act of ridding it of
some of the aristocratic vermin that yet lingers on its soil?"

The officer stared at his interlocutor, amazed by the tone of the man as
much as by the sudden growls that chorused it, but nowise intimidated by
either the one or the other.

"I proclaimed my right when I issued my charge in the name of the
Republic," he answered shortly.

"We are the Republic," Souvestre retorted, with a wave of the hand
towards the ferocious crowd of men and women behind him. "We are the
Nation--the sacred people of France. In our own name, Citizen-soldier,
we charge you to withdraw and leave us undisturbed."

Here lay the basis of an argument into which, however, the Captain,
being neither politician nor dialectician, was not minded to be drawn.
He shrugged his shoulders and turned to his men.

"Present arms!" was the answe