As he advanced, however, he heard a sullen murmur coming from the Place de Bouffay, as he passed before a long street which led into that _Place_. There was a sea of heads, lit up by flaring lights; but Gaston passed on--his business was at the castle--and the sight disappeared. At last he saw the castle--he saw the door gaping wide before him. The sentinel on guard upon the drawbridge tried to stop him; but Gaston, his order in his hand, pushed him roughly aside and entered the inner door. Men were talking, and one of them wiping his tears off as he talked. Gaston understood it all. "A reprieve!" he cried, "a re--" The word died upon his lips; but the men had done better than hear, they had seen his despairing gesture. "Go, go!" they cried, showing him the way, "go! and, perhaps you may yet arrive in time." And they themselves dispersed in all directions. Gaston pursued his way; he traversed a corridor, then some empty rooms, then the great chamber, and then another corridor. Far off, through the bars, by the torchlight, he perceived the great crowd of which he had caught a glimpse before. He had passed right through the castle, and issued on a terrace; thence he perceived the esplanade, a scaffold, men, and all around the crowd. Gaston tried to cry, but no one heard him, he waved his handkerchief, but no one saw him; another man mounts on the scaffold, and Gaston uttered a cry and threw himself down below. He had leaped from the top of the rampart to the bottom. A sentinel tried to stop him, but he threw him down, and descended a sort of staircase which led down to the square, and at the bottom was a sort of barricade of wagons. Gaston bent down and glided between the wheels. Beyond the barricade were all St. Simon's grenadiers--a living hedge; Gaston, with a desperate effort, broke through the line, and found himself inside the ring. The soldiers, seeing a man, pale and breathless, with a paper in his hand, allowed him to pass. All of a sudden he stopped, as if struck by lightning. Talhouet!--he saw him!--Talhouet kneeling on the scaffold! "Stop! stop!" cried Gaston, with all the energy of despair. But even as he spoke the sword of the executioner flashed like lightning--a dull and heavy blow followed--and a terrible shudder ran through all the crowd. The young man's shriek was lost in the general cry arising from twenty thousand palpitating breasts at once. He had arrived a moment too late--Talhouet was dead: and, as he lifted his eyes, he saw in the hand of the headsman the bleeding head of his friend--and then, in the nobility of his heart, he felt that, one being dead, they all should die. That not one of them would accept a pardon which arrived a head too late. He looked around him; Du Couëdic mounted in his turn, clothed with his black mantle, bareheaded and bare-necked. Gaston remembered that he also had a black mantle, and that his head and neck were bare, and he laughed convulsively.