Outside I felt like a child in darkness, on whom the one door leading to life and liberty had closed, as his hand touched it. I felt a dead, numbing disappointment that at any moment might develop into sharp pain. This change in Madame Catinot, resembling so exactly the change in Louis St. Alais, what could be the cause of it? What had been revealed to her? What was the mystery, the plot, the danger that made them all turn from me, as if I had the plague? For awhile I was in the depths of despair. Then the warm sunshine that filled the streets, and spoke of coming summer, kindled lighter thoughts. After all it could not be hard to find a person in Nîmes! I had soon found M. Louis. And this was the eighteenth century and not the sixteenth. Women were no longer exposed to the pressure that had once been brought to bear on them; nor men to the violence natural in old feuds. And then--as I thought of that and strove to comfort myself with it--I heard a noise burst into the street behind me, a roar of voices and a sudden trampling of hundreds of feet; and turning I saw a dense press of men coming towards me, waving aloft blue banners, and crucifixes, and flags with the Five Wounds. Some were singing and some shouting, all were brandishing clubs and weapons. They came along at a good pace, filling the street from wall to wall; and to avoid them I stepped into an archway, that opportunely presented itself. They came up in a moment, and swept past me with deafening shouts. It was difficult to see more than a forest of waving arms and staves over swart excited faces; but through a break in the ranks I caught a glimpse of three men walking in the heart of the crowd, quiet themselves, yet the cause and centre of all; and the middle man of the three was Froment. One of the others wore a cassock, and the third had a reckless air, and a hat cocked in the military fashion. So much I saw, then only rank upon rank of hurrying shouting men. After these again followed three or four hundred of the scum of the city, beggars and broken rascals and homeless men. As I turned from staring after them I found a man at my elbow; by a strange coincidence the very same man who, the night before, had directed me to the Hôtel de Louvre. I asked him if that was not M. Froment. "Yes," he said with a sneer. "And his brother." "Oh, his brother! What is his name, Monsieur?" "Bully Froment, some call him." "And what are they going to do?" "Groan outside a Protestant church to-day," he answered pithily. "To-morrow break the windows. The next day, or as soon as they can get their courage to the sticking point, fire on the worshippers, and call in the garrison from Montpellier. After that the refugees from Turin will come, we shall be in revolt, and there will be dragoonings. And then--if the Cevennols don't step in--Monsieur will see strange things." "But the Mayor?" I said. "And the National Guards? Will they suffer it?"