"Hé, mes braves!" he cried, "it is growing late; half Paris knows your deeds, it is true, but how many are still ignorant? Will you let darkness overtake you with your trophies yet undisplayed? Away, let the other quarters hear of your triumphs. Vaunt them before the Palais Royal, and let the Tuileries, so often defiled by the Tyrant’s presence, be purified now by these relics, evidence of the people’s power!" As he ceased, his words were taken up by all present. "To the Palais Royal! To the Tuileries!" they howled. Dangeau, not only saved, but a hero,—so fickle a thing is the mood of the sovereign people,—was cheered, embraced, carried across the court-yard, and with difficulty permitted to remain behind; whilst the whole mob, singing, shouting, and dancing, took its frenzied course towards the royal palaces. CHAPTER VI A DOUBTFUL SAFETY Mlle de Rochambeau knelt by her open window. She had been praying, but for a long time her lips had not moved, and now it seemed as if their numbness had invaded her heart, and lay there deadening fear, emotion, sorrow, all,—all except that heavy beating, to which she listened half unconsciously, as though it were a sound from some world which hardly concerned her. She had not left the little room at all. On the first day she had been put off civilly enough. "Rest a little, Ma’mselle, rest a little; to-morrow I will make my sister a little visit, and you shall accompany me. To-day I am busy, and without me you would not be admitted to the prison." But when to-morrow came, there were at first black looks, then impatient words, and finally the key turned in the lock and hours of terrifying solitude. The one small window overlooked a dark and squalid street where the refuse of the neighbourhood festered. It was noisy and malodorous, and she sickened at every sense. The sounds, the smells, the sight of the wizened, wicked-looking children, who fought, and swore, and scrabbled in the noisome gutter below, all added to her growing apprehension. Closing the cracked pane she retreated to the farther corner of the attic, and again slow hours went by. About noon a distant roar startled her to the window once more. Nothing was to be seen, but the sound came again, and yet again; increasing each time in violence, and becoming at last a heavy, continuous boom. There is scarcely anything so immediately terrifying as that dull mutter of a city in tumult. Mlle de Rochambeau’s smooth years supplied her with no experience by which to measure the threat of that far uproar, and yet every nerve in her body thrilled to it and cried danger! It was then that she began to pray. The afternoon wore on, and she grew faint as well as frightened. Rosalie Leboeuf had set coffee and coarse bread before her in the early morning, but that was now many hours since.