Rochefort pursued the latter, and for a very good reason. The man was running into a cul-de-sac. The pursued one did not perceive this till suddenly he found himself faced by the barrier, closed at night, which extended from the wall of the Bénédictines to the wall of the cloister of the Madeleine. Then he turned like a rat and Rochefort in the moonlight had a full view of him. He was quite young, perhaps not more than eighteen, with a white, degenerate, evil face—one of those faces that the Cour des Miracles invented and constructed, that the Revolution patented and passed on to the _banlieue_ of Paris, and that the _banlieue_ handed to us under the title of “Apache.” “Ah,” said Rochefort, “I have got you!” The words were within an ace of being his last. The ruffian’s hand shot up and a knife whistled past Rochefort’s neck, almost grazing it. Instantly, and like a streak of light, the sword of Rochefort passed through the chest of the knife-thrower, pinning him to the door of the barrier, where he dandled for a moment, flinging his arms about like a marionette. Then, unpinned, he fell all of a heap on the cobble-stones. The sword had gone clean through his heart. He was as dead as Calixtus. Rochefort had done the only thing possible to do with him—put him out of existence; and feeling that the world was well rid of a ruffian, he looked about for something to wipe his sword upon. A piece of paper was blowing about in the wind and the moonlight; it was a scrap of an old ballad then being hawked about Paris. He used it to wipe his sword, returned the blade to its sheath, and, well content with the clean and very sharp-cut business he had completed, returned on his tracks. Nearing again the Rue de Chevilly, he again heard the cries of a woman, and next moment, turning the corner at a run, he saw two forms struggling together, the form of a woman and the form of a man. Camus, with his arm round the waist of the woman they had rescued, was trying to kiss her. In a moment Rochefort was up to them. His quick blood was boiling. To rescue a woman and then to assault her would, in cold blood, have appeared to him the last act—in hot blood it raised the devil in him against Camus. He ran up to them, crooked his arm in that of the count, and, swinging him apart from his prey, struck him an open-handed blow in the face that sent him rolling in the gutter. Then he drew his sword. Now Camus was reckoned a brave man, and undoubtedly he was, but courage has many qualities. Caught acting like a ruffian and smitten open-handed in the face and cast in the gutter, he sat for a moment as if stunned. Then, rising with his clothes and gloves soiled, he stood for a moment gazing at Rochefort, but he did not draw his sword. His spirit for the moment was broken.