At about ten o'clock, Plon, hearing voices in the passage, peeped out. There still stood Madame Didier, wan as a ghost, but with the restless excitement gone. A man was speaking to her, an elderly, grimy, frightened-looking man, with a bald head. He was telling a story in a dull, hopeless kind of way, as if at such a time no one story was particularly distinguished from another, and pity had to wait for quieter seasons. "He was shot in the next street; Jean says he never wished to go with them, but they forced him along. After that he got into a doorway, where he might have hidden himself, but Fort saw him, and denounced him. Fort might have left him alone, as it was he your husband was trying to persuade, but at such a time men look after their own skins. They dragged him out and set him up with some others against a wall, and that was the end of him, and of a good many others." His listener flung up her hands with a gesture of wild despair, and turned her face to the wall, speechless. The man, who was by trade a _trieur_ or chief _chiffonnier_, seeing Plon's head appear, turned round and addressed himself to him. "Fort is a traitor, he has denounced others. They will be here presently searching for arms. It is short work I can tell you." "And my--my _locataire_ is shot!" murmured Plon, panic-struck. But the man whose mission was ended, turned round without another word and went out into the lurid darkness. The landlord made a trembling effort to stagger across the passage, and to pluck at Marie's gown. When he spoke, his voice quavered with fright. "Come, come, Madame Didier, go upstairs, and--and--cry there like a good woman. Here it isn't safe. Besides, if they know who you are, I might be compromised. Poor Jean! Heavens!--" For a volley of rifle shot poured down the street, a rush of feet followed; and Plon fled precipitously to his den, double-bolted his door, and rolled his mattress round him for protection. Marie Didier slowly turned her head, and, as if recognising the wisdom of his advice, felt her way along the wall and groped up the dark staircase. No one had lit the small oil lamp on the _premier_, but light from burning houses flashed in at windows; a child had been killed by the fragment of a shell, and the mother was loudly wailing; some were peering out of their doorways; they stared at Marie, who crept up like a ghost. In this rookery the young couple had kept themselves apart, and had no friends. But it was instinctively known that something had happened to Jean, and only one woman was bold enough to question the wife. She answered steadily in a strange strained voice: "They are searching the houses. We shall have them soon."