With mingled loathing and dread they lifted their faces upward, where the ponderous rope ladders coiled down the towers and swayed heavily into the darkness forever sleeping below. They stirred sluggishly against the walls, and took an appearance of awful life, like great serpents writhing there, and the crowd watched them in ominous silence. Then an awful scene arose. A man flung himself over the battlements and snatching at one of these weird ladders, attempted to escape some danger from above. Before he was half way down, the body and most evil face of another man, leaned over the stone-work, and, with an awkwardly held hatchet, began to hew the ropes. One after another the strands gave way, till only a single rope was left. A blow of the hatchet upon this, and the rope began to uncoil, swifter and swifter, whirling the poor wretch with it, until the last strand tore apart, and he fell, with a dull, heavy crash, to the court below. That poor body was so broken upon the stones, that no one could have told the bruised face as that of Christopher, the head keeper. For one awful minute, the crowd had been held dumb with suspense; but, like wild beasts, those awe-stricken men grew ferocious with the sight of blood. A shout of triumph from the men overhead, drove them on to action. Once more the tumult raged all the fiercer, from this hush of passions. A hoarse cry rang through the prison, “To the cells—to the cells! What are we doing here, while a prisoner remains to be set free? Down to the depths! Down to the depths!” This cry threw the crowd into fresh tumults of rage. A wild rush was made for the cells. Borne forward by the torrent of people, two women kept together, clinging to each other, and making frantic efforts to come up with a man, who carried a heavy ax in his hand. Pale, eager, and panting for breath, the youngest of these females, a fair delicate girl, was guiding her mother toward a low door, in one of the towers. “That is the door; I know it again! Keep close, mamma; Monsieur Jacques is just before us. He will break it in with his ax. Come, come! Oh God! help me, they have tore us apart!” It was true. The woman, in her wild desire to push through the crowd, was unconscious that Marguerite was not still by her side. A man passed her bearing a lighted torch. She snatched it from him, saying sharply, “I have the greatest need.” The tumult raged louder and more fiercely. Men and women remembered their hatred of the place, and they roamed through it like tigers. The doors of the prison began to crash under their axes, while the maddened crowd rushed downward into the bowels of the earth, burning with passion, but awe-stricken and silent as an army of ghosts.