“He shall be released at once,” said Malin, who thought himself lost when he saw each youth clutch his weapon convulsively.

“You owe your life to that promise,” said Marie-Paul, solemnly.  “If it is not fulfilled to-night we shall find you again.”

“As to that howling populace,” said Laurence, “If you do not send them away, the next blood will be yours.  Now, Monsieur Malin, leave this house!”

The Conventionalist did leave it, and he harangued the crowd, dwelling on the sacred rights of the domestic hearth, the habeas corpus and the English “home.”  He told them that the law and the people were sovereigns, that the law was the people, and that the people could only act through the law, and that power was vested in the law.  The particular law of personal necessity made him eloquent, and he managed to disperse the crowd.  But he never forgot the contemptuous expression of the two brothers, nor the “Leave this house!” of Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne.  Therefore, when it was a question of selling the estates of the Comte de Cinq-Cygne, Laurence’s brother, as national property, the sale was rigorously made.  The agents left nothing for Laurence but the chateau, the park and gardens, and one farm called that of Cinq-Cygne.  Malin instructed the appraisers that Laurence had no rights beyond her legal share,—­the nation taking possession of all that belonged to her brother, who had emigrated and, above all, had borne arms against the Republic.

The evening after this terrible tumult, Laurence so entreated her cousins to leave the country, fearing treachery on the part of Malin, or some trap into which they might fall, that they took horse that night and gained the Prussian outposts.  They had scarcely reached the forest of Gondreville before the hotel Cinq-Cygne was surrounded; Malin came himself to arrest the heirs of the house of Simeuse.  He dared not lay hands on the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, who was in bed with a nervous fever, nor on Laurence, a child of twelve.  The servants, fearing the severity of the Republic, had disappeared.  The next day the news of the resistance of the brothers and their flight to Prussia was known to the neighborhood.  A crowd of three thousand persons assembled before the hotel de Cinq-Cygne, which was demolished with incredible rapidity.  Madame de Cinq-Cygne, carried to the hotel Simeuse, died there from the effects of the fever aggravated by terror.

Michu did not appear in the political arena until after these events, for the marquis and his wife remained in prison over five months.  During this time Malin was away on a mission.  But when Monsieur Marion sold Gondreville to the Councillor of State, Michu understood the latter’s game,—­or rather, he thought he did; for Malin was, like Fouche, one of those personages who are of such depth in all their different aspects that they are impenetrable when they play a part, and are never understood until long after their drama is ended.