A series of explosions almost hurled him back; the next moment the barracks, rent in gaps, were swept with a sheet of flame. The assailants, with a cry of triumph, hurled themselves into the palace, while the Swiss, forced up the staircase, broke and fled, pursued and shot down by the victors. Through the apartments, shattering doors, overturning furniture, howling along the empty corridors, the mob crashed in, as the first victorious blast of a tempest, shrieking: "À la mort! À la mort!" One by one the flying Swiss were overtaken. Packs of the invaders leaped upon them, burying them from view, until, stabbed with a dozen useless thrusts, their bodies were flung with exulting cries from the windows; while as the foremost stopped to enjoy their prey, the herd swept to the front with hungry arms and the ever-rising shout: "Death to all! Death to all!" Barabant, racing ahead to save the women, soon found himself in front, running beside a Marseillais, who cried to him with the voice of Javogues: "Keep with me, citoyen, keep with me! Leave the curs to the others!" A Swiss, hearing them at his back, fell on his knees, shrieking for mercy. "Leave him. Don't stop!" Javogues panted. Seizing Barabant's arm, he bore him down a side gallery, shouting: "There he is! There he is!" At the end of the corridor Barabant beheld a tall form disappearing at the head of a narrow stairway. Up this they rushed, into the single outlet, a guard-room, only to find it empty. Javogues threw himself furiously against the walls. "I saw him, I saw him; he is here somewhere!" "Who?" "Dossonville! He was among the Swiss. I saw him." He ran around the room, assailing it with his huge fists. All at once he gave a cry, and lifting the hatchet he bore, he sent a secret door crashing in. "He is here!" He hacked his way through and disappeared, thundering down the passage. Barabant, only half comprehending what had happened, remained a moment in perplexity. But the sound of women's cries startled him again to activity. He darted back into the current of the mob and gained the women's apartments. At the foot of the staircase an officer of the National Guard was crying: "We don't kill women!" "Spare the women!" Barabant echoed. A dozen others took up the cry. "The Republic does not make war on women!" The mob, balked of half its vengeance by the firmness of a dozen officers, turned to desecration and pillage. Troops of women, like furies, swarmed through the royal apartments, tearing the beds to pieces, exulting, foul and crazed.