They stumbled down one of the steps, and the doctor fell; Berthier recovered himself, and wrenched a musket from one of the guard, and with it defended himself, madly striking right and left. The plaster-cast dealer seized a pike, and smote at him with it; the blow fell on Berthier's fingers, and he dropped the gun, screaming with pain. Knives were unsheathed, and the infuriated people rushed in upon him. 'Stay, stay!' cried Madame Plomb, uncoiling the long yellow strip of silk from her head. 'Strangle him; I have promised him this.' She threw the coil about his throat, his hands went up into the air; his feet were tripped up, and he fell. 'Stand off, stand off!' yelled his wife; 'let me kiss him.' She stooped over the suffocating man, whose eyes were shot from their sockets, and whose face was dark with congested blood. 'He is like Gabrielle's father,' exclaimed madame, laughing. 'How his feet spurn, and his hands clutch at the steps! Ah, ah, Berthier! I salute you. You are purple,--leaden like me.' Then the mob fell upon him with knives and bayonets, and the unfortunate woman saw nothing but a writhing knot of people, splashing in blood, that spouted between their trampling feet, and poured down the steps. 'Ah, ha! madame,' roared a butcher, catching the poor lady by the arm, 'see, see! you have your vengeance on them both now.' He pointed to Berthier's head, at that moment elevated on the end of the pitchfork belonging to the man masked in the black ox-hide. 'Yes,' said madame, 'the devil possesses him now.' 'And your father, madame?' 'What of him? He is not dead, you know. That was poor Adolphe they buried.' 'Pooh!' Dancing above the sea of heads was a face stiffened in death, with the mouth crammed full of blood-sodden hay. Madame Berthier gazed wildly at it for a full minute, following it with her eyes. Then she uttered a scream, so piercing that it was heard in the hall by Bailly and the electors. 'Who have killed him? Show me the murderers!' 'Madame,' said the butcher, 'you have been his murderer. You have killed them both.' She turned with another cry, thrust her hands into her dishevelled grey hair, and starting forwards, fell down the steps, struck her head against the stones in falling, and would have been trodden to death by the raging crowd, in their eagerness to approach the corpse of Berthier, had not Percenez sprung to her assistance, stooped and raised her in his arms. 'Help me, friend,' he said to a guard, 'let us place her in safety.' So they bore her, stunned, and with her temple bleeding, to the home of Madame Deschwanden. CHAPTER XXXVII.