Yet even for that moment of delay it seemed that I might pay too dearly. A dozen steps brought me to the low-browed door he had indicated, in the thickness of the wall at the foot of the main staircase. But already a man was adjusting the last bar. I cried to him to open. "Open! I must go out!" I cried. "_Dieu!_ It is too late!" he said, with a dark glance at me. My heart sank; I feared he was right. Still he began to unbar, though grudgingly, and in half a minute we had the door loose. With a pistol in his hand, he opened it on the chain and looked out. It opened on a narrow passage--which, God be thanked, was still empty. He dropped the chain, and almost thrust me out, cried, "To the left!" and then, as dazzled by the sunlight I turned that way, I heard the door slam behind me and the chain rattle as it was linked again. The houses that rose on each side somewhat deadened the noise of the mob and the firing; but as I hurried down the alley, bareheaded and with the pistol which Froment had given me firmly clutched in my hand, I heard a fresh spirt of noise behind me, and knew that the assailants had entered the passage by the farther end; and that had I waited a moment longer I should have been too late. As it was, my position was sufficiently forlorn, if it was not hopeless. Alone and a stranger, without hat or badge, knowing little of the streets, I might blunder at any corner into the arms of one of the parties--and be massacred. I had a notion that the church of the Capuchins was that which I had visited near Madame Catinot's; and my first thought was to gain the main street leading in that direction. This was not so easy, however; the alley in which I found myself led only into a second passage equally strait and gloomy. Entering this, I turned after a moment's hesitation to the left, but before I had gone a dozen paces I heard shouting in front of me; and I halted and retraced my steps. Hurrying in the other direction, I found myself in a minute in a little gloomy well-like court, with no second outlet that I could see, where I stood a moment panting and at a loss, rendered frantic and almost desperate by the thought that, while I hovered there uncertain, the die might be cast, and those whom I sought perish for lack of my aid. I was about to return, resolved to face at all risks the party of rioters whom I heard behind me, when an open window in the lowest floor of one of the houses that stood round the court caught my eye. It was not far from the ground, and to see was to determine; the house must have an outlet on the street. In a dozen strides I crossed the court, and resting one hand on the sill of the window, vaulted into the room, alighted sideways on a stool, and fell heavily to the floor.