fell, the face with the two dints in the nose became obscured: anon

struggled out of the smoke again, as if it were the face of the cruel

Marquis, burning at the stake and contending with the fire.

The chateau burned; the nearest trees, laid hold of by the fire,

scorched and shrivelled; trees at a distance, fired by the four fierce

figures, begirt the blazing edifice with a new forest of smoke.

Molten lead and iron boiled in the marble basin of the fountain;

the water ran dry; the extinguisher tops of the towers vanished

like ice before the heat, and trickled down into four rugged wells

of flame. Great rents and splits branched out in the solid walls, like

crystallisation; stupefied birds wheeled about and dropped into

the furnace; four fierce figures trudged away, East, West, North,

and South, along the night-enshrouded roads, guided by the

beacon they had lighted, towards their next destination. The

illuminated village had seized hold of the tocsin, and, abolishing

the lawful ringer, rang for joy.

Not only that; but the village, light-headed with famine, fire,

and bell-ringing, and bethinking itself that Monsieur Gabelle had

to do with the collection of rent and taxesthough it was but a

small instalment of taxes, and no rent at all, that Gabelle had got

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

in those latter daysbecame impatient for an interview with him,

and, surrounding his house, summoned him to come forth for

personal conference. Whereupon, Monsieur Gabelle did heavily

bar his door, and retire to hold counsel with himself. The result of

that conference was, that Gabelle again withdrew himself to his

house-top behind his stack of chimneys; this time resolved, if his

door were broken in (he was a small Southern man of retaliative

temperament), to pitch himself head foremost over the parapet,

and crush a man or two below.

Probably, Monsieur Gabelle passed a long night up there with

the distant chateau for fire and candle, and the beating at his door,

combined with the joy-ringing for music; not to mention his

having an ill-omened lamp slung across the road before his

posting-house gate, which the village showed a lively inclination to

displace in his favour. A trying suspense, to be passing a whole

summer night on the brink of the black ocean, ready to take that

plunge into it upon which Monsieur Gabelle had resolved! But, the

friendly dawn appearing at last, and the rush-candles of the village

guttering out, the people happily dispersed, and Monsieur Gabelle

came down bringing his life with him for that while.

Within a hundred miles, and in the light of other fires, there

were other functionaries less fortunate, that night and other

nights, whom the rising sun found hanging across once-peaceful

streets, where they had been born and bred; also, there were other

villagers and townspeople less fortunate than the mender of roads

and his fellows, upon whom the functionaries and soldiery turned

with success, and whom they strung up in their turn. But, the

fierce figures were steadily wending East, West, North, and South,

be that as it would; and whosoever hung, fire burned. The altitude