He was in the Rue St. Honore now, and speeding westward. But the flood
still rose with him, and roared abreast of him. Nay, it outstripped him.
When he came, panting, within sight of his goal, and lacked but a hundred
paces of it, he found his passage barred by a dense mass of people moving
slowly to meet him. In the heart of the press the light of a dozen
torches shone on half as many riders mailed and armed; whose eyes, as
they moved on, and the furious gleaming eyes of the rabble about them,
never left the gabled roofs on their right. On these from time to time a
white-clad figure showed itself, and passed from chimney-stack to chimney-
stack, or, stooping low, ran along the parapet. Every time that this
happened, the men on horseback pointed upwards and the mob foamed with
rage.
Tignonville groaned, but he could not help. Unable to go forward, he
turned, and with others hurrying, shouting, and brandishing weapons, he
pressed into the Rue du Roule, passed through it, and gained the Bethizy.
But here, as he might have foreseen, all passage was barred at the Hotel
Ponthieu by a horde of savages, who danced and yelled and sang songs
round the Admiral's body, which lay in the middle of the way; while to
right and left men were bursting into houses and forcing new victims into
the street. The worst had happened there, and he turned panting,
regained the Rue St. Honore, and, crossing it and turning left-handed,
darted through side streets until he came again into the main
thoroughfare a little beyond the Croix du Tiroir, that marked the corner
of Mademoiselle's house.
Here his last hope left him. The street swarmed with bands of men
hurrying to and fro as in a sacked city. The scum of the Halles, the
rabble of the quarter poured this way and that, here at random, there
swayed and directed by a few knots of men-at-arms, whose corselets
reflected the glare of a hundred torches. At one time and within sight,
three or four houses were being stormed. On every side rose
heart-rending cries, mingled with brutal laughter, with savage jests,
with cries of "To the river!" The most cruel of cities had burst its
bounds and was not to be stayed; nor would be stayed until the Seine ran
red to the sea, and leagues below, in pleasant Normandy hamlets, men, for
fear of the pestilence, pushed the corpses from the bridges with poles
and boat-hooks.
All this Tignonville saw, though his eyes, leaping the turmoil, looked
only to the door at which he had left Mademoiselle a few hours earlier.
There a crowd of men pressed and struggled; but from the spot where he
stood he could see no more. That was enough, however. Rage nerved him,
and despair; his world was dying round him. If he could not save her he
would avenge her. Recklessly he plunged into the tumult; blade in hand,
with vigorous blows he thrust his way through, his white sleeve and the
white cross in his hat gaining him passage until he reached the fringe of
the band who beset the door. Here his first attempt to pass failed; and
he might have remained hampered by the crowd, if a squad of archers had
not ridden up. As they spurred to the spot, heedless over whom they
rode, he clutched a stirrup, and was borne with them into the heart of
the crowd. In a twinkling he stood on the threshold of the house, face
to face and foot to foot with Count Hannibal, who stood also on the
threshold, but with his back to the door, which, unbarred and unbolted,
gaped open behind him.