Honore de Balzac Read Online Free PDF

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daughter of the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, was then twelve years of age;
her cousins both loved her and she loved them equally. Like other twins
the Simeuse brothers were so alike that for a long while their mother
dressed them in different colors to know them apart. The first comer,
the eldest, was named Paul-Marie, the other Marie-Paul. Laurence de
Cinq-Cygne, to whom their danger was revealed, played her woman's part
well though still a mere child. She coaxed and petted her cousins and
kept them occupied until the very moment when the populace surrounded
the Cinq-Cygne mansion. The two brothers then knew their danger for the
first time, and looked at each other. Their resolution was instantly
taken; they armed their own servants and those of the Comtesse de
Cinq-Cygne, barricaded the doors, and stood guard at the windows, after
closing the wooden blinds, with the five men-servants and the Abbe
d'Hauteserre, a relative of the Cinq-Cygnes. These eight courageous
champions poured a deadly fire into the crowd. Every shot killed or
wounded an assailant. Laurence, instead of wringing her hands, loaded
the guns with extraordinary coolness, and passed the balls and powder to
those who needed them. The Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne was on her knees.
    "What are you doing, mother?" said Laurence.
    "I am praying," she answered, "for them and for you."
    Sublime words,—said also by the mother of Godoy, prince of the Peace,
in Spain, under similar circumstances.
    In a moment eleven persons were killed and lying on the ground among a
number of wounded. Such results either cool or excite a populace; either
it grows savage at the work or discontinues it. On the present occasion
those in advance recoiled; but the crowd behind them were there to kill
and rob, and when they saw their own dead, they cried out: "Murder!
Murder! Revenge!" The wiser heads went in search of the representative
to the Convention, Malin. The twins, by this time aware of the
disastrous events of the day, suspected Malin of desiring the ruin
of their family, and of causing the arrest of their parents, and the
suspicion soon became a certainty. They posted themselves beneath the
porte-cochere, gun in hand, intending to kill Malin as soon as he made
his appearance; but the countess lost her head; she imagined her house
in ashes and her daughter assassinated, and she blamed the young men for
their heroic defence and compelled them to desist. It was Laurence who
opened the door slightly when Malin summoned the household to admit
him. Seeing her, the representative relied upon the awe he expected to
inspire in a mere child, and he entered the house. To his first words
of inquiry as to why the family were making such a resistance, the girl
replied: "If you really desire to give liberty to France how is it that
you do not protect us in our homes? They are trying to tear down this
house, monsieur, to murder us, and you say we have no right to oppose
force to force!"
    Malin stood rooted to the ground.
    "You, the son of a mason employed by the Grand Marquis to build his
castle!" exclaimed Marie-Paul, "you have let them drag our father to
prison—you have believed calumnies!"
    "He shall be released at once," said Malin, who thought himself lost
when he saw each youth clutch his weapon convulsively.
    "You owe your life to that promise," said Marie-Paul, solemnly. "If it
is not fulfilled to-night we shall find you again."
    "As to that howling populace," said Laurence, "If you do not send them
away, the next blood will be yours. Now, Monsieur Malin, leave this
house!"
    The Conventionalist did leave it, and he harangued the crowd, dwelling
on the sacred rights of the domestic hearth, the habeas corpus and
the English "home." He told them that the law and the people were
sovereigns, that the law
was
the people, and that the people could
only act through the law, and that power was vested in the law. The
particular law of personal necessity made him eloquent, and he managed
to disperse the