Chauvelin stands in the doorway with his back to the room and to Marguerite, his claw-like hands intertwined convulsively behind him. The silhouettes of the two remaining soldiers are still visible; they stand silently and at attention with their muskets in their hands. Between them and Chauvelin hovers the tall, ungainly figure of a man, clothed in rags and covered in soot and coal-dust. His feet are thrust into wooden shoes, his grimy hands are stretched out each side of him; and on his left arm, just above the wrist, there is an ugly mark like the brand seared into the flesh of a convict. Just now he looks terribly distressed with a tearing fit of coughing. Chauvelin curtly bids him stand aside; and at the same moment the church clock of St. Louis, close by, strikes seven. "Now then, citizen soldiers!" Chauvelin commands. The soldiers grasp their muskets more firmly, and Chauvelin raises his hand. The next instant he is thrust violently back into the room, loses his balance, and falls backward against a table, whilst the door is slammed to between him and the soldiers. From the other side of the door there comes the sound of a short, sharp scuffle. Then silence. Marguerite, holding her breath, hardly realised that she lived. A second ago she was facing death; and now. . . . Chauvelin struggled painfully to his feet. With a mighty effort and a hoarse cry of rage, he threw himself against the door. The impetus carried him further than he intended, no doubt; for at that same moment the door was opened, and he fell up against the massive form of the grimy coalheaver, whose long arms closed round him, lifted him off the floor, and carried him like a bundle of straw to the nearest chair. "There, my dear M. Chambertin!" the coalheaver said, in exceedingly light and pleasant tones. "Let me make you quite comfortable!" Marguerite watched--dumb and fascinated--the dexterous hands that twined a length of rope round the arms and legs of her helpless enemy, and wound his own tricolour scarf around that snarling mouth. She scarcely dared trust her eyes and ears. There was the hideous, dust-covered mudlark with bare feet thrust into sabots, with ragged breeches and tattered shirt; there was the cruel, mud-stained face, the purple lips, the toothless mouth; and those huge, muscular arms, one of them branded like the arm of a convict, the flesh still swollen with the searing of the iron. "I must indeed crave your ladyship's forgiveness. In very truth, I am a disgusting object!" Ah, there was the voice!--the dear, dear, merry voice! A little weary perhaps, but oh! so full of laughter and of boyish shame-facedness! To Marguerite it seemed as if God's own angels had opened to her the gates of Paradise. She did not speak; she scarce could move. All that she could do was to put out her arms.