Simeuse brothers were so alike that for a long while their mother dressed them in different colors to know them apart.  The first comer, the eldest, was named Paul-Marie, the other Marie-Paul.  Laurence de Cinq-Cygne, to whom their danger was revealed, played her woman’s part well though still a mere child.  She coaxed and petted her cousins and kept them occupied until the very moment when the populace surrounded the Cinq-Cygne mansion.  The two brothers then knew their danger for the first time, and looked at each other.  Their resolution was instantly taken; they armed their own servants and those of the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, barricaded the doors, and stood guard at the windows, after closing the wooden blinds, with the five men-servants and the Abbe d’Hauteserre, a relative of the Cinq-Cygnes.  These eight courageous champions poured a deadly fire into the crowd.  Every shot killed or wounded an assailant.  Laurence, instead of wringing her hands, loaded the guns with extraordinary coolness, and passed the balls and powder to those who needed them.  The Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne was on her knees.

“What are you doing, mother?” said Laurence.

“I am praying,” she answered, “for them and for you.”

Sublime words,—­said also by the mother of Godoy, prince of the Peace, in Spain, under similar circumstances.

In a moment eleven persons were killed and lying on the ground among a number of wounded.  Such results either cool or excite a populace; either it grows savage at the work or discontinues it.  On the present occasion those in advance recoiled; but the crowd behind them were there to kill and rob, and when they saw their own dead, they cried out:  “Murder!  Murder!  Revenge!” The wiser heads went in search of the representative to the Convention, Malin.  The twins, by this time aware of the disastrous events of the day, suspected Malin of desiring the ruin of their family, and of causing the arrest of their parents, and the suspicion soon became a certainty.  They posted themselves beneath the porte-cochere, gun in hand, intending to kill Malin as soon as he made his appearance; but the countess lost her head; she imagined her house in ashes and her daughter assassinated, and she blamed the young men for their heroic defence and compelled them to desist.  It was Laurence who opened the door slightly when Malin summoned the household to admit him.  Seeing her, the representative relied upon the awe he expected to inspire in a mere child, and he entered the house.  To his first words of inquiry as to why the family were making such a resistance, the girl replied:  “If you really desire to give liberty to France how is it that you do not protect us in our homes?  They are trying to tear down this house, monsieur, to murder us, and you say we have no right to oppose force to force!”

Malin stood rooted to the ground.

“You, the son of a mason employed by the Grand Marquis to build his castle!” exclaimed Marie-Paul, “you have let them drag our father to prison—­you have believed calumnies!”