Then, whilst his straining senses reeled, he felt a jolt and the cart stopped. All about them surged an excited crowd. There was a confused noise, women screamed. One high, clear voice called out, "Murderers! Assassins!" and the crowd took up the cry with angry insistence. "See the old man! and the girl! ma foi, she has an angel’s face. Is the guillotine to eat up every one?" The muttering rose to a growl, and the growl to a roar. To and fro surged the growing crowd, the horses began to back, the car tilted. Dangeau looked round him, his heart beating to suffocation, but Aline appeared neither to know nor care what passed. For her the world was empty save for they two, and for them the gate of Heaven stood wide. She heard the song of the morning stars; she caught a glimpse of the glory unutterable, unthinkable. As the shouting grew, the driver of their cart cast anxious glances over his shoulder. All at once he stood up, waving his red cap, calling, gesticulating. A cry went up, "The gendarmerie, Henriot! Henriot and the gendarmes!" and the press was driven apart by the charge of armed horsemen. At their head rode Henriot, just freed from prison, flushed with strong drink, savage with his own impending doom. The crowd scattered, but a man sprang for an instant to the wheels of the cart, and whispered one swift sentence in Dangeau’s ear: "Robespierre falls; nothing can save him." It was Goyot in a workman’s blouse, and as he dropped off again Dangeau made curt answer. "In time for France, if not for me. Good-bye, my friend," and then Goyot was gone and the lumbering wheels rolled on. On the other side of the cart, the Abbé Delacroix prayed audibly, and the smooth Latin made a familiar cadence, like running water heard in childhood, and kept in some secret cell of the memory. Beside the priest sat old General de Loiserolles, grey and soldierly, hugging the thought that he had saved his boy; how entirely he was not to know. Answering his son’s name, leaving that son sleeping, he was giving him, not the doubtful reprieve of a day, but all the years of his natural life, since young De Loiserolles was amongst those set free by the death of Robespierre. As the cart stopped by the scaffold foot, he crossed himself, and followed the Abbé to the axe, with a simple dignity that drew a strange murmur from the crowd. For the heart of Paris was melting fast, and the bloodshed was become a weariness. Prisoner after prisoner went up the steps, and after each dull thud announced the fallen axe, that long ominous "ah" of the crowd went up.