The Galley Slave's Ring; or, The Family of Lebrenn

At the moment that the poor boy died, George's grandfather, unable any longer to restrain himself, decided, despite his feebleness, to join the fray. He hurried down to the street, and ran to the barricade. From his window, his ammunition, moveables and fixtures, being exhausted, he had had leisure to follow the vicissitudes of the conflict. He saw the little fellow fall; looked for him among the dead and the wounded; he called to him in heartrending accents.

So stubborn was the resistance offered by the defenders of the barricade that the Municipalists, after sustaining heavy losses, were compelled to beat a retreat, which they effected in good order.

The firing had ceased for several minutes when suddenly a shot was heard in the near vicinity, and, almost immediately after, the sound of horses approaching at a gallop.

Presently, on the rear side of the barricade, a colonel of dragoons hove in sight, followed by a number of horsemen, sabers in hand, like their commander, driving before them a group of insurgents who fired at intervals as they retreated on the run.

It was Colonel Plouernel. Separated from his squadron by an onrush of insurgents, he was endeavoring to cut himself a passage to the boulevard, not imagining he would find his path barred at that spot by a barricade.

The combat, suspended for a moment, broke out afresh. At first the defenders of the barricade believed that the small number of troopers was the vanguard of a regiment which meant to take them in the rear, and thus place them between two fires, by the return of the Municipalists to the assault.

The fifteen or twenty dragoons commanded by Colonel Plouernel were received with a general discharge of musketry. Several of the dragoons fell; the colonel himself was wounded. But obedient to his natural intrepidity, he drove his spurs into his horse's flanks, waved his sword and cried out:

"Dragoons! Cut down this rabble with your swords!"

The colonel's horse gave an enormous bound; it brought him to the very base of the barricade, but the animal slipped over the rolling cobblestones and fell prone.

Although wounded and pinned to the ground under his mount, the Count of Plouernel still defended himself with heroic valor. His every sword thrust found its mark. But it was all of no avail; he was about to succumb to superior numbers when, at the risk of his own life, Monsieur Lebrenn, assisted by his son and George, although the latter was wounded, threw themselves between the prostrate colonel and his exasperated assailants, and succeeded in extricating him from under his horse, and in pushing him into the shop.

"Friends! These dragoons are isolated; they are in no condition to resist us; let us disarm them; let there be no useless carnage – they are our brothers!" someone cried.

"Mercy to the soldiers – but death to their colonel!" cried the men who had just been driven to the spot before the merciless and headlong onslaught of the Count of Plouernel. "Death to the colonel!"

"Yes! Yes!" repeated several voices.

"No!" shouted back the linendraper, barring the door with his gun, while George came to his support. "No! No! No massacre after battle! No cowardice!"

"The colonel killed my brother with a pistol shot fired within an inch of his face – down there, at the corner of the street," bellowed a man with bloodshot eyes, his mouth foaming with rage, and brandishing a sword. "Death to the colonel!"

"Yes! Yes! Death!" shouted several threatening voices. "Death!"

"No! You shall not kill a wounded man! You can not mean to murder an unarmed man – a prisoner!"

"Death," shouted back an increasing number of angry voices. "Death!"

"Very well, walk in! Let us see if you will have the heart to dishonor the cause of the people with a crime."

And the merchant, although ready to offer fresh resistance to the ferocity of the angry men, left free the passage of the door which he had until then blocked.

The assailants remained motionless. Lebrenn's words had gone home.

Nevertheless, the man who desired to avenge his brother rushed forward, sword in hand, emitting a savage cry. Already his feet were on the threshold when, seizing him by the waist, George held him back, saying:

"Would you, indeed, commit murder! Oh, no, brother! You are no murderer!"

And with tears in his eyes, George Duchene embraced the man.

George's voice, his countenance, his accent and his deportment made so deep an impression upon the angry man who cried for vengeance, that he lowered his head, flung away his sword, and, dropping upon a heap of cobblestones, covered his face in his hands, murmuring between the sobs that choked him:

"My brother! My poor brother!"

The struggle was over. The merchant's son went out for tidings, and returned with the information that the King, together with the royal family, had fled; that everywhere the troops fraternized with the people; that the Chamber of Deputies was dissolved; and that a provisional government was set up at the City Hall.

The wounded, whether they belonged to the insurrectionists or to the army, were transported to the improvised hospitals that were set up in several shops, as had been done in the linendraper's. As much attention was bestowed upon the soldiers as upon those who shortly before were engaged in a deadly struggle with them. The women gathered around the wounded. If there was aught to be regretted it was the excessiveness of the zeal of the tenders of good offices.

Several soldiers of the Municipal Guard, besides an officer of dragoons who accompanied Colonel Plouernel, having been taken prisoner, they were distributed among the neighboring houses, whence they soon thereafter emerged in civilian dress, and arm in arm with their adversaries of the same morning.

Lebrenn's shop was crowded with wounded men. One of these lay upon the counter; the others on mattresses hastily spread upon the floor. The merchant and his family assisted several surgeons of the quarter. Gildas was engaged in distributing wine mixed with water to the patients, whose throats were parched with thirst. Among the latter, and lying beside each other upon the same mattress, were father Bribri and a sergeant of the Municipal Guards, an old soldier with moustaches as grey as those of the ragpicker himself.

The latter, after having pronounced Flameche's funeral oration, had been shot in the leg during the encounter with the dragoons. The sergeant, on his part, had received a wound in the loins in the course of the first attack that the barricade had to sustain.

"Zounds! How I suffer!" murmured the sergeant. "And what a thirst! My throat is on fire!"

Father Bribri overheard the words, and seeing Gildas approach holding in one hand a bottle of wine and water, and in the other a basket with glasses, called out to him as if he were at an inn:

"Waiter! This way, waiter! The old man here wants something to drink, if you please! He is thirsty!"

Surprised and touched by the civility of his companion on the mattress, the sergeant said to him:

"Thank you, my good old man; I may not decline, because I feel as if I would choke."

Upon the summons of father Bribri, Gildas filled one of the glasses in his basket. He stooped down and handed it to the soldier. The latter essayed to rise, but failed, and said as he dropped back:

"Zounds! I can not sit up. My loins are shattered."

"Wait a second, sergeant," said father Bribri; "one of my legs is disabled, but my loins and arms are still sea-worthy. I shall give you a helping hand."

The ragpicker helped the soldier to sit up, and supported him until he had emptied his glass. After that he gently helped him to lie down again.

"Thanks, and pardon the trouble, my good old man," said the Municipalist.

"At your service, sergeant."

"Tell me, old boy – "

"What is it, sergeant?"

"Doesn't it strike you that this thing is rather droll?"

"What, sergeant?"

"Well, to think that two hours ago we were trying to shoot holes through each other, and now we are exchanging courtesies."

"Don't mention it, sergeant! Shots are stupid things."

"All the more when people have no ill-will for each other – "

"Zounds! May the devil take me, sergeant, if I had any ill-will towards you! Nevertheless, for all I know, it was I who put the bullet in your loin – just as, without having the slightest ill feeling for me, you would have planted your bayonet in my bowels. Wherefore, I repeat it, it is a stupid thing for people who have no ill-will toward each other to come to blows."