I was just in time. As I entered by one door Froment entered by the other, with a little band of his braves; of whom several, I now observed, wore green ribbons--the Artois colours. His great stature raising him above the crowd of heads, I saw that he was wounded; a little blood was running down his cheek, and his eyes shone with a brilliance almost of madness. But he was still cool; he had still so much the command, not only of himself, but of those round him, that the commotion grew still and abated under his eye. In a moment men who before had only tumbled over and embarrassed one another, flew to their places; and, though the howling of a hostile mob could plainly be heard at the end of the street, and it was clear that he had fallen back before an overwhelming force, resolution seemed in a moment to take the place of panic, and hope of despair. Standing on the threshold, and pointing this way, and that, with a discharged pistol which he held in his hand, he gave a few short, sharp orders for the barricading of the door, and saw them carried out, and sent this man to one post, and that man to another. Then, the crowd, which had before cumbered the place, melting as if by magic, he saw me forcing my way to him. And he beckoned to me. If he played a part, then let me say, once for all, he played it nobly. Even now, when I guessed that all was lost, I read no fear and no envy in his face; and in what he said there was no ostentation. "Get out quickly," he muttered, in an undertone, forestalling by a hasty gesture the excited questions I had on my lips, "through yonder door, and by the little postern at the foot of the other staircase. Go by the east gate, and you will find horses at the St. Geneviève outside. It is all over here!" he added, wringing my hand hard, and pushing me towards the door. "But Mademoiselle?" I cried; and I told him that she was not in the house. "What?" he said, pausing and looking at me, with his face grown suddenly dark. "Are you mad? Do you mean that she has gone out?" "She is not here," I answered. "I am told that she went to the church with Madame St. Alais, and has not returned." "That beldam!" he exclaimed, with a terrible oath, and then, "God help them!" he said--twice. And after a moment of silence, meeting my eyes and reading the horror in them, he laughed harshly. "After all, what matter?" he said recklessly. "We shall all go together! Let us go like gentlemen. I did what I could. Do you hear that?" He held up his hand, as a roar of musketry shook the house; and he gave an order. The small windows had been stopped with paving stones, the door made solid with the wall behind it; and daylight being shut out, lamps had been lighted, which gave the long whitewashed, stone-groined room a strange sombre look. Or it was the grim faces I saw round me had that effect.