The order had not passed his lips when there came a splintering crash, and in an instant the whole room was in roaring racket and confusion. Some half of the prisoners, forereading their certain doom, had made a desperate plunge for escape through the rearward window by which they stood. They got clear away. Their less prompt, or fortunate, companions were in the same moment surrounded and isolated each from each. Suleau lifted his voice above the din. “Commit me, my friends, to the sacrifice. Perhaps my blood, which, it seems, they most desire, will appease their fury!” He struggled to throw himself towards the door. His motive misunderstood, a half-dozen _sans-culottes_ flung themselves upon and pinioned him in their arms. At the same instant Théroigne leapt like a cat and seized him by his collar. “At last!” she hissed in his ear. “Dost thou know me?” “Thou art Théroigne!” he panted. He had caught the president’s words. He understood now something of the reason of this woman’s violence. “Ah!” she cried in a hurried fury of speech, “and has not _my_ time come, thou dog with a false name, thou nameless cur, so to slander and revile the woman thou drovest to ruin?” They were slowly edging him towards the door. He could only shake his head at her. “Why dost thou not speak?” she urged. “Why dost thou not implore my mercy? I could save thee if I would.” He still did not answer. “Ah!” she sighed, with a cruel feint of tenderness, “for the sake of the old days, Basile! Ask me, by the memory of our embraces, of thy child that I bore in my womb, to pity and protect thee!” “You are mad,” he cried. “I have never seen you in my life.” She struck him across the mouth. The blow, the sight of the little blood that sprang from the wound, were a double provocation to the beasts of prey. They bore him with a rush to the outer door, through it, into the yard beyond. Torn, bleeding, fighting every foot of his way, but never protesting, he would sell his life dearly to these mongrels. The yelling crowd surged and rocked before him. Suddenly--with that exaltation of the perceptions that often seems to signify the first flight-essay of the soul--he saw far back in the thick of the press of inhuman faces one face that he recognised as that of a man who, years before, on the morning of the Reveillon riots, had spoken to him, mistaking him for another. Now, from the expression of this one face, he educed a desperate hope. He gathered it from the anguish of its features, from the conviction that its owner was frantically endeavouring to thrust and beat a passage towards him through the throng. God! he thought; if he could only reach the face, he would somehow be saved. With a furious effort he tore himself free, and snatched at and wrenched a sabre from a hand that threatened him. “Here!” he shrieked to the face; “to meet me, monsieur--to meet me!”