Near the table covered with fire-arms could be seen the wide-open door of the staircase leading to the upper and lower stories. Radoub dropped his sabre, seized a double-barrelled pistol in each hand, and instantly fired at random through the door leading to the spiral staircase; then he grasped a blunderbuss, firing that also, and directly afterwards a gun loaded with buckshot, whose fifteen balls made as much noise as a volley of grape-shot. After which, pausing to take breath, he shouted in thundering tones down the staircase, "Long live Paris!" Seizing another blunderbuss bigger than the first he aimed it towards the vault of the winding staircase and paused again. The uproar that ensued in the lower hall baffles description. Resistance is shattered by such unlooked for surprises. Two of the balls of Radoub's triple discharge had taken effect, killing the older of the brothers Pique-en-bois and Houzard, who was M. de Quélen. "They are upstairs," cried the Marquis. At this exclamation; the men determined to abandon the _retirade_ and no flock of birds could have surpassed the rapidity of their flight, as they rushed pell-mell towards the staircase, the Marquis urging them onward. "Make haste!" he cried; "now we must show our courage by flight. Let us all go up to the second floor and there begin anew!" He himself was the last man to leave the _retirade_, and to this act of bravery he owed his life. Radoub, with his finger on the trigger, was concealed on the first landing of the staircase, watching the rout. The first men who appeared at the turn of the staircase received the discharge full in their faces and fell, and if the Marquis had been among them he would have been a dead man. Before Radoub had time to seize another weapon they had all passed, and the Marquis, moving more deliberately than the others, brought up the rear. Supposing as they did that the room on the first story was filled with the besiegers, they never paused until they reached the mirror room on the second story,--the room with the iron door and the sulphur match, where they must either capitulate or die. Gauvain, quite as much surprised as any one of the besieged at the sound of the shots from the staircase, and having no idea of the source of this unexpected assistance, but availing himself of it without trying to understand, had leaped over the _retirade_, followed by his men, and, sword in hand, had driven the fugitives to the first story. There he found Radoub, who, with a military salute, said to him,-- "One moment, commander. It was I who did that. I had not forgotten Dol, so I followed your example, and took the enemy between two fires." "You are a clever scholar," replied Gauvain with a smile. One's eyes, like those of night birds, grow accustomed to a dim light after a certain time, and Gauvain discovered that Radoub was covered with blood. "But you are wounded, comrade!"