Still he stared at the door, desperately uncertain what to do; then he caught a cry above the rest: "Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Ouvre la porte ou nous sommes mortes!"
Hesitating no longer, he found the small catch lock and, inserting his finger in the shallow slot, pulled it back. The door burst open, and the Queen almost fell into his arms.
She was in her nightdress with only a petticoat pulled loosely over it, and clutched her stockings in her hand. Stumbling past him, and followed by two of her women, she ran across the wide parquet of the Oeil de Baeuf, wrenched open another low, concealed door on the far side of it and disappeared.
Later Roger learned that the door he had opened gave on to her dressing-room, and was used only as a private means of communication between her and the King, the similar door through which she had disappeared giving on to his apartments. And that normally the little door was kept locked only on her side of it, so that night some murderous hand must have locked it on the side of the Oeil de Boeuf to prevent her escaping that way from her assassins.
He learnt too that had it not been for the loyalty of her women she would certainly have been murdered. Madame Auguie1 and Madame Thibaut, with their two femmes de chambre, had ignored her orders to go to bed, and the four of them had sat up with their backs against her bedroom door. At the first sounds of commotion Madame Augui6 had run to the door of the ante-chamber and found one of the bodyguard, Monsieur de St. Marie, his face covered with blood, defending it against a horde of poissardes, who were screaming: "We have come in our white aprons to get the Queen's bowels, that we may make red cockades out of them!"
Slamming and relocking the door Madame Auguie had rushed back to the bedroom. Madame Thibaut had in those few seconds roused the Queen; and they had succeeded in getting her away before the doors of the ante-room were broken in.
The Queen had hardly entered the King's apartments when a dozen Garde du Corps and other gentlemen came running into the Oeil de Bceuf with drawn swords. Among them was Madame de Tourzel with the Royal children. When they had followed the Queen, their escort drew themselves up in front of the door, ready to defend it with their lives.
Pandemonium had now broken loose in the Queen's apartments. Drawing his sword Roger ran through the dressing-room. He found the bedroom empty, but in the ante-chamber beyond it a fierce struggle was taking place. Some of Lafayette's National Guard had arrived upon the scene and were fighting with the members of the bodyguard, whom they had been told were plotting to surprise and massacre them.
De Vaudreuil was there standing on a table, shouting that they had been told a pack of lies, and begging both sides to put up their weapons. His Liberal sentiments were known, so some notice was taken of him. Then Monsieur de Chevanne ran forward and, baring his breast, offered himself as a victim if the citizen soldiers demanded one. With the swift change of sentiment so typical of the French the attackers immediately acclaimed him a hero, embraced the members of the bodyguard and swore to defend them from their comrades.
But all was not yet over. The mob had fought its way up the great marble staircase and penetrated to the Oeil de Boeuf. By another entrance Lafayette had arrived and reached the King, whose only reproach to him was: "Monsieur, had I foreseen that you would be obliged to sleep, I should have remained awake."
Although belatedly, Lafayette now showed both loyalty and considerable courage. Out in the courtyard he saved the lives of ten bodyguards by offering his life for theirs; then declared that he would no longer command cannibals, and would resign his post unless his men would accept his orders. This turned the tide and his troops began to clear the palace of the sans-culottes.
They were assisted in their task by the bodyguards and courtiers. In a hundred rooms, scores of corridors and on a dozen staircases, altercations and scuffles were going on. The majority of the rabble, now finding the National Guards against them, offered no resistance and slouched off, hurling curses over their shoulders; but, here and there, groups put up a fight and could not be turned out without bloodshed. In one such group, Roger saw a tall fishwife slash at a soldier with a hatchet, wound him in the arm, duck under the guard of another and run from the room. Sword in hand, he went after her.
The clothes of the poissardes amounted almost to a uniform, so it was easy to distinguish them. Most of the women were great muscular creatures, coarse-mouthed and brutal-faced; but Roger had been surprised to see that many of them were much above the average height. The one that he was chasing looked as tall as himself.
Seeing two Swiss guards approaching along the corridor, she darted up a service staircase. Roger dashed after her and caught sight of her again on the next floor. Shouting at her that if she halted and agreed to leave the palace quietly he would not harm her, he pursued her down the passage. At its end she came to a door and, finding it locked, turned at bay.
As Roger came pounding up he saw her face clearly for the first time. It was not that of a woman, but of a man. Next second he realized that his quarry was de Roubec.
Instantly there recurred to his mind the words he had overheard in the Palais Royal a few nights before—about not giving out the women's clothes until a first-class opportunity presented itself.* This, then, explained why so many of the poissardes were much taller than the average woman. The Orleanists had taken advantage of the ancient liberty accorded to the fishwives of Paris to approach the King and Queen without formality, to disguise a number of assassins in the type of garments the poissardes always wore, so that they could mingle with the real poissardes and under that cover commit the heinous task they had been given.
The revelation of this new piece of treachery added fuel to Roger's wrath. He had no thought now of settling his old score by slicing off the villain's ears and nose. With a cry of rage he rushed forward, intent to kill. De Roubec was half-crouching against the locked door with his hatchet raised to strike, but he never delivered the blow. It had been only a second before that he had recognized his pursuer. The knowledge that it was Roger now seemed to paralyse him with fear. The blood drained from his face. His unshaven chin showed blue in the early-morning light, making his lean visage more than ever incongruous under its woman's bonnet. His mouth dropped open, showing his yellowed teeth. It seemed that he was about to scream for mercy; but there was time neither for him to ask nor receive it. Roger leapt the last few paces that separated them. His feet landed with a thud upon the floor. At the same instant he drove his sword through the cowering man's body."
De Roubec's eyes started from his head, a long low moan issued from his lips; suddenly he slid sideways and collapsed in a heap. Roger put his foot on the torso, gave his sword a twist, drew it out, and wiped it on the hem of the dark skirt beneath the poissarde's white apron.
For a moment he stood there frowning down upon the man who had caused Isabella and himself so much misery. They might by now be married and gloriously happy together in England had it not been for de Roubec's evil activities in Florence. Roger felt not an atom of compunction at having struck him down like a rat in a corner. To his mind the self-styled Chevalier had earned death thrice over; twice for having wrecked Isabella's life, and his own, by bringing about their separation, and a third time for having participated in the attempt to assassinate the Queen.