The Wandering Jew Part 167

"Is that your final word?"

"It is our last word."

"Silence!" cried Sleepinbuff, suddenly, as he listened, balancing himself on his tottering legs. "It is like the noise of a crowd not far off." A dull sound was indeed audible, which became every moment more and more distinct, and at length grew formidable.

"What is that?" said Olivier, in surprise.

"Now," replied Morok, smiling with a sinister air, "I remember the host told me there was a great ferment in the village against the factory. If you and your other comrades had separated from Hardy's other workmen, as I hoped, these people who are beginning to howl would have been for you, instead of against you."

"This was a trap, then, to set one half of M. Hardy's workmen against the other!" cried Olivier; "you hoped that we should make common cause with these people against the factory, and that--"

The young man had not time to finish. A terrible outburst of shouts, howls, and hisses shook the tavern. At the same instant the door was abruptly opened, and the host, pale and trembling, hurried into the chamber, exclaiming: "Gentlemen! do any of you work at M. Hardy's factory?"

"I do," said Olivier.

"Then you are lost. Here are the Wolves in a body, saying there are Devourers here from M. Hardy's, and offering them battle--unless the Devourers will give up the factory, and range themselves on their side."

"It was a trap, there can be no doubt of it!" cried Olivier, looking at Morok and Sleepinbuff, with a threatening air; "if my mates had come, we were all to be let in."

"I lay a trap, Olivier?" stammered Jacques Rennepont. "Never!"

"Battle to the Devourers! or let them join the Wolves!" cried the angry crowd with one voice, as they appeared to invade the house.

"Come!" exclaimed the host. Without giving Olivier time to answer, he seized him by the arm, and opening a window which led to a roof at no very great height from the ground, he said to him: "Make your escape by this window, let yourself slide down, and gain the fields; it is time."

As the young workman hesitated, the host added, with a look of terror:

"Alone, against a couple of hundred, what can you do? A minute more, and you are lost. Do you not hear them? They have entered the yard; they are coming up."

Indeed, at this moment, the groans, the hisses, and cheers redoubled in violence; the wooden staircase which led to the first story shook beneath the quick steps of many persons, and the shout arose, loud and piercing: "Battle to the Devourers!"

"Fly, Olivier!" cried Sleepinbuff, almost sobered by the danger.

Hardly had he p.r.o.nounced the words when the door of the large room, which communicated with the small one in which they were, was burst open with a frightful crash.

"Here they are!" cried the host, clasping his hands in alarm. Then, running to Olivier, he pushed him, as it were, out of the window; for, with one foot on the sill, the workman still hesitated.

The window once closed, the publican returned towards Morok the instant the latter entered the large room, into which the leaders of the Wolves had just forced an entry, whilst their companions were vociferating in the yard and on the staircase. Eight or ten of these madmen, urged by others to take part in these scenes of disorder, had rushed first into the room, with countenances inflamed by wine and anger; most of them were armed with long sticks. A blaster, of Herculean strength and stature, with an old red handkerchief about his head, its ragged ends streaming over his shoulders, miserably dressed in a half-worn goat-skin, brandished an iron drilling-rod, and appeared to direct the movements. With bloodshot eyes, threatening and ferocious countenance, he advanced towards the small room, as if to drive back Morok, and exclaimed, in a voice of thunder:

"Where are the Devourers?--the Wolves will eat 'em up!"

The host hastened to open the door of the small room, saying: "There is no one here, my friends--no one. Look for yourselves."

"It is true," said the quarryman, surprised, after peeping into the room; "where are they, then? We were told there were a dozen of them here. They should have marched with us against the factory, or there'd 'a been a battle, and the Wolves would have tried their teeth!"

"If they have not come," said another, "they will come. Let's wait."

"Yes, yes; we will wait for them."

"We will look close at each other."

"If the Wolves want to see the Devourers," said Morok, "why not go and howl round the factory of the miscreant atheists? At the first howl of the Wolves they will come out, and give you battle."

"They will give you--battle," repeated Sleepinbuff, mechanically.

"Unless the Wolves are afraid of the Devourers," added Morok.

"Since you talk of fear, you shall go with us, and see who's afraid!"

cried the formidable blaster, and in a thundering voice, he advanced towards Morok.

A number of voices joined in with, "Who says the Wolves are afraid of the Devourers?"

"It would be the first time!"

"Battle! battle! and make an end of it!"

"We are tired of all this. Why should we be so miserable, and they so well off?"

"They have said that quarrymen are brutes, only fit to torn wheels in a shaft, like dogs to turn spits," cried an emissary of Baron Tripeaud's.

"And that the Devourers would make themselves caps with wolf-skin,"

added another.

"Neither they nor their wives ever go to ma.s.s. They are pagans and dogs!" cried an emissary of the preaching abbe.

"The men might keep their Sunday as they pleased; but their wives not to go to ma.s.s!--it is abominable.

"And, therefore, the curate has said that their factory, because of its abominations, might bring down the cholera to the country."

"True? he said that in his sermon."

"Our wives heard it."

"Yes, yes; down with the Devourers, who want to bring the cholera on the country!"

"Hooray, for a fight!" cried the crowd in chorus.

"To the factory, my brave Wolves!" cried Morok, with the voice of a Stentor; "on to the factory!"

"Yes! to the factory! to the factory!" repeated the crowd, with furious stamping; for, little by little, all who could force their way into the room, or up the stairs, had there collected together.

These furious cries recalling Jacques for a moment to his senses, he whispered to Morok: "It is slaughter you would provoke? I wash my hands of it."

"We shall have time to let them know at the factory. We can give these fellows the slip on the road," answered Morok. Then he cried aloud, addressing the host, who was terrified at this disorder: "Brandy!--let us drink to the health of the brave Wolves! I will stand treat." He threw some money to the host, who disappeared, and soon returned with several bottles of brandy, and some gla.s.ses.

"What! gla.s.ses?" cried Morok. "Do jolly companions, like we are, drink out of gla.s.ses?" So saying, he forced out one of the corks, raised the neck of the bottle to his lips, and, having drunk a deep draught, pa.s.sed it to the gigantic quarryman.

"That's the thing!" said the latter. "Here's in honor of the treat!--None but a sneak will refuse, for this stuff will sharpen the Wolves' teeth!"