"Curse him!" cried a man as he sent his stick through one of the pictures. In a moment they had taken the action as an example, and the room was wrecked. The whole house was wrecked from roof to cellar, windows smashed, doors torn from their hinges, the stairs broken, even part of the walls and floors and ceilings were hacked to pieces. Might there not be some hiding hole, behind the walls or under the floors, where the priest had crept?
"Where is he?" asked one. There had come a pause, for the wreckage was complete.
"The church! St. Etienne!" came the answer.
The question was asked fiercely, and none answered it, but one idea seemed to impel each one of them to reach the street as soon as possible, and immediately they were struggling toward the door.
Meanwhile a man ran quickly through the city, and ever and anon he paused to ask: "Where is the Duke?" Some answered him by questions, some pointed to the way they had seen the Duke take only a little while ago, some shouted out directions after him. He found Herrick after a long search returning from the Place Beauvoisin. Herrick had heard that Countess Elisabeth was confined in the gate tower, and he had at once had the horses put to her carriage and seen that she was safely conveyed home again.
The man in the cassock ran panting to his side, and in a few words told his story.
Herrick stayed to hear no more. Part of the crowd were using his name as an excuse for plunder, for murder perhaps; and in another moment he was leading his men quickly in the direction of the Rue St. Romain.
There had been consternation in St. Etienne at the sudden interruption of the wedding, but the real cause was not known at first. As the whisper that the Duke had returned and had arrested both Mademoiselle de Liancourt and the Count became a certainty, the congregation left quickly.
Father Bertrand stood motionless by the altar. He stood alone there for a few moments after the last person had gone. Then he returned slowly to the sacristy, unrobed, and gave orders that all the doors of the church should be shut. It was the church he thought of, there was no thought of his personal safety. Nor was it fear that made him remain in the sacristy. The Countess Elisabeth had said that he did not bear upon him the mark of an honest man, but she had only seen part of the schemer, she knew nothing of the priest. His ways may have been narrow, cramped by the very work he had been called upon to accomplish, but according to the light that was in him, he was an honest man and a brave one. He had been called to fight in one particular direction for the church he loved, and he had allowed nothing to turn him from the thing he had set out to perform. Were many men as honest as this? for, truly had Father Bertrand said that personal honor lay along a different road. Now all his schemes were ruined. His work in Vayenne was over, the end not attained. He had failed. It was a broken man who sat leaning slightly forward in his chair in the sacristy.
