Allons, enfants de la patrie! 
    Le jour de gloire est arrive
    Contre nous de la tyrannie
    L’etendard sanglant est leve.

Nearer it came, raucously bawled by some hundreds of voices, a dread sound that had come so suddenly to displace at least temporarily the merry, trivial air of the “Ca ira!” which hitherto had been the revolutionary carillon.  Instinctively Mme. de Plougastel and Aline clung to each other.  They had heard the sound of the ravishing of that other house in the neighbourhood, without knowledge of the reason.  What if now it should be the turn of the Hotel Plougastel!  There was no real cause to fear it, save that amid a turmoil imperfectly understood and therefore the more awe-inspiring, the worst must be feared always.

The dreadful song so dreadfully sung, and the thunder of heavily shod feet upon the roughly paved street, passed on and receded.  They breathed again, almost as if a miracle had saved them, to yield to fresh alarm an instant later, when madame’s young footman, Jacques, the most trusted of her servants, burst into their presence unceremoniously with a scared face, bringing the announcement that a man who had just climbed over the garden wall professed himself a friend of madame’s, and desired to be brought immediately to her presence.

“But he looks like a sansculotte, madame,” the staunch fellow warned her.

Her thoughts and hopes leapt at once to Rougane.

“Bring him in,” she commanded breathlessly.

Jacques went out, to return presently accompanied by a tall man in a long, shabby, and very ample overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat that was turned down all round, and adorned by an enormous tricolour cockade.  This hat he removed as he entered.

Jacques, standing behind him, perceived that his hair, although now in some disorder, bore signs of having been carefully dressed.  It was clubbed, and it carried some lingering vestiges of powder.  The young footman wondered what it was in the man’s face, which was turned from him, that should cause his mistress to out and recoil.  Then he found himself dismissed abruptly by a gesture.

The newcomer advanced to the middle of the salon, moving like a man exhausted and breathing hard.  There he leaned against a table, across which he confronted Mme. de Plougastel.  And she stood regarding him, a strange horror in her eyes.

In the background, on a settle at the salon’s far end, sat Aline staring in bewilderment and some fear at a face which, if unrecognizable through the mask of blood and dust that smeared it, was yet familiar.  And then the man spoke, and instantly she knew the voice for that of the Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr.

“My dear friend,” he was saying, “forgive me if I startled you.  Forgive me if I thrust myself in here without leave, at such a time, in such a manner.  But... you see how it is with me.  I am a fugitive.  In the course of my distracted flight, not knowing which way to turn for safety, I thought of you.  I told myself that if I could but safely reach your house, I might find sanctuary.”