Lord Tony's Wife

'Tyrant! tyrant! tyrant!'

It was Pierre who spoke, his voice was hardly raised above a murmur, but
there was such an intensity of passion expressed in his face, in the
fingers of his hand which closed slowly and convulsively as if they were
clutching the throat of a struggling viper, there was so much hate in
those muttered words, so much power, such compelling and awesome
determination that an ominous silence fell upon the village lads and the
men who sat with him in the low narrow room of the auberge des Trois
Vertus.

Even the man in the tattered coat and threadbare breeches, who ­­
perched upon the centre table---had been haranguing the company on the
subject of the Rights of Man, paused in his peroration and looked down
on Pierre half afraid of that fierce flame of passionate hate which his
own words had helped to kindle.

The silence, however, had only lasted a few moments, the next Pierre was
on his feet, and a cry like that of a bull in a slaughter-house escaped
his throat.

'In the name of God!' he shouted, 'let us cease all that senseless
talking. Haven't we planned enough and talked enough to satisfy our
puling consciences? The time has come to strike, mes amis, to strike I
say, to strike at those cursed aristocrats, who have made us what we
are---ignorant, wretched, downtrodden--senseless clods to work our
fingers to the bone, our bodies till they break so that they may wallow
in their pleasures and their luxuries! Strike, I say!' he reiterated
while his eyes glowed and his breath came and went through his throat
with a hissing sound. 'Strike! as the men and women struck in Paris on
that great day in July. To them the Bastille stood for tyranny---and the
tyrant cowered, cringed, made terms---he was frightened at the wrath of
the people! That is what happened in Paris! That is what must happen in
Nantes. The château of the duc de Kernogan is our Bastille! Let us
strike at it to-night, and if the arrogant aristocrat resists, we'll
raze his house to the ground. The hour, the day, the darkness are all
propitious. The arrangements hold good. The neighbours are ready.
Strike, I say!'