The Countess took one pace forward, as if she would have followed him, as
if she would have tried further persuasion. But as she moved a cry
rooted her to the spot. A rush of feet and the babel of many voices
filled the passage with a tide of sound, which drew rapidly nearer. The
escape was known! Would the fugitives have time to slip out below?
Some one knocked at the door, tried it, pushed and beat on it. But the
Countess and all in the room had run to the windows and were looking out.
If the two had not yet made their escape they must be taken. Yet no; as
the Countess leaned from the window, first one dusty figure and then a
second darted from a door below, and made for the nearest turning, out of
the Place Ste.-Croix. Before they gained it, four men, of whom, Badelon,
his grey locks flying, was first, dashed out in pursuit, and the street
rang with cries of "Stop him! Seize him! Seize him!" Some one--one of
the pursuers or another--to add to the alarm let off a musket, and in a
moment, as if the report had been a signal, the Place was in a hubbub,
people flocked into it with mysterious quickness, and from a neighbouring
roof--whence, precisely, it was impossible to say--the crackling fire of
a dozen arquebuses alarmed the city far and wide.
Unfortunately, the fugitives had been baulked at the first turning.
Making for a second, they found it choked, and, swerving, darted across
the Place towards St.-Maurice, seeking to lose themselves in the
gathering crowd. But the pursuers clung desperately to their skirts,
overturning here a man and there a child; and then in a twinkling,
Tignonville, as he ran round a booth, tripped over a peg and fell, and La
Tribe stumbled over him and fell also. The four riders flung themselves
fiercely on their prey, secured them, and began to drag them with oaths
and curses towards the door of the inn.
The Countess had seen all from her window; had held her breath while they
ran, had drawn it sharply when they fell. Now, "They have them!" she
muttered, a sob choking her, "they have them!" And she clasped her
hands. If he had followed her advice! If he had only followed her
advice!
But the issue proved less certain than she deemed it. The crowd, which
grew each moment, knew nothing of pursuers or pursued. On the contrary,
a cry went up that the riders were Huguenots, and that the Huguenots were
rising and slaying the Catholics; and as no story was too improbable for
those days, and this was one constantly set about, first one stone flew,
and then another, and another. A man with a staff darted forward and
struck Badelon on the shoulder, two or three others pressed in and
jostled the riders; and if three of Tavannes' following had not run out
on the instant and faced the mob with their pikes, and for a moment
forced them to give back, the prisoners would have been rescued at the
very door of the inn. As it was they were dragged in, and the gates were
flung to and barred in the nick of time. Another moment, almost another
second, and the mob had seized them. As it was, a hail of stones poured
on the front of the inn, and amid the rising yells of the rabble there
presently floated heavy and slow over the city the tolling of the great
bell of St.-Maurice.