Delaford reiterated that the city was bombarded, thousands of armed men were marching on the hotel, and my Lady ought to be informed.  A distant cannonade, the trampling of many feet, and terrified voices on the stairs, finally roused Louis, and hastily rising, he quitted his room, and found all the ladies on the alert.  Lady Conway was holding back Virginia from the window, and by turns summoning Isabel to leave it, and volubly entreating the master of the hotel to secure it with feather-beds to defend them from the shot.

‘Oh, Fitzjocelyn!’ she screamed, ’tell him so—­tell him to take us to the cellars.  Why will he not put the mattresses against the windows before they fire?’

’I should prefer a different relative position for ourselves and the beds,’ said Louis, in his leisurely manner, as he advanced to look out.  ’These are the friends of order, my dear aunt; you should welcome your protectors.  Their beards and their bayonets by gaslight are a grand military spectacle.’

’They will fire!  There will be fighting here!  They will force their way in.  Don’t, Virginia—­I desire you will not go near the window.’

’We are all right.  You are as safe as if you were in your own drawing-room,’ said Captain Lonsdale, walking in, and with his loud voice drowning the panic, that Louis’s cool, gentle tones only irritated.

Isabel looked up and smiled, as Louis stood by her, leaving his aunt and Virginia to the martial tones of their consoler.

’I could get no one to believe me when I said it was only the soldiers,’ she observed, with some secret amusement.

‘The feather-bed fortress was the leading idea,’ said Louis.  ’Some ladies have a curious pseudo presence of mind.’

‘Generally, I believe,’ said Isabel, ’a woman’s presence of mind should be to do as she is told, and not to think for herself, unless she be obliged.’

‘Thinking for themselves has been fatal to a good many,’ said Louis, relapsing into meditation—­’this poor Paris among the rest, I fancy.  What a dawn for a Sunday morning!  How cold the lights look, and how yellow the gas burns.  We may think of home, and be thankful!’ and kneeling with one knee on a chair, he leant against the shutter, gazing out and musing aloud.

‘Thankful, indeed !’ said Isabel, thoughtfully.

’Yes—­first it was thinking not at all, and then thinking not in the right way.’

Isabel readily fell into the same strain.  ’They turned from daylight and followed the glare of their own gas,’ said she.

So they began a backward tracing of the calamities of France; and, as Louis’s words came with more than usual slowness and deliberation, they had only come to Cardinal de Richelieu, when Captain Lonsdale exclaimed, ’I am sorry to interrupt you, Lord Fitzjocelyn, but may I ask whether you can afford to lose any more blood?’

’Thank you; yes, the bandage is loosened, but I was too comfortable to move,’ said Louis, sleepily, and he reeled as he made the attempt, so that he could not have reached his room without support.