The sweat stood on his brow as he paused under the low arch of the alley-
end, tasting the bitter forlornness of the dog banned and set for death
in that sunlit city. In every window of the gable end which faced his
hiding-place he fancied an eye watching his movements; in every distant
step he heard the footfall of doom coming that way to his discovery. And
while he trembled, he had to reflect, to think, to form some plan.
In the town was no place for him, and short of the open country no
safety. And how could he gain the open country? If he succeeded in
reaching one of the gates--St. Antoine, or St. Denis, in itself a task of
difficulty--it would only be to find the gate closed, and the guard on
the alert. At last it flashed on him that he might cross the river; and
at the notion hope awoke. It was possible that the massacre had not
extended to the southern suburb; possible, that if it had, the Huguenots
who lay there--Frontenay, and Montgomery, and Chartres, with the men of
the North--might be strong enough to check it, and even to turn the
tables on the Parisians.
His colour returned. He was no coward, as soldiers go; if it came to
fighting he had courage enough. He could not hope to cross the river by
the bridge, for there, where the goldsmiths lived, the mob were like to
be most busy. But if he could reach the bank he might procure a boat at
some deserted point, or, at the worst, he might swim across.
From the Louvre at his back came the sound of gunshots; from every
quarter the murmur of distant crowds, or the faint lamentable cries of
victims. But the empty street before him promised an easy passage, and
he ventured into it and passed quickly through it. He met no one, and no
one molested him; but as he went he had glimpses of pale faces that from
behind the casements watched him come and turned to watch him go; and so
heavy on his nerves was the pressure of this silent ominous attention,
that he blundered at the end of the street. He should have taken the
southerly turning; instead he held on, found himself in the Rue
Ferronerie, and a moment later was all but in the arms of a band of city
guards, who were making a house-to-house visitation.
He owed his safety rather to the condition of the street than to his
presence of mind. The Rue Ferronerie, narrow in itself, was so choked at
this date by stalls and bulkheads, that an edict directing the removal of
those which abutted on the cemetery had been issued a little before.
Nothing had been done on it, however, and this neck of Paris, this main
thoroughfare between the east and the west, between the fashionable
quarter of the Marais and the fashionable quarter of the Louvre, was
still a devious huddle of sheds and pent-houses. Tignonville slid behind
one of these, found that it masked the mouth of an alley, and, heedless
whither the passage led, ran hurriedly along it. Every instant he
expected to hear the hue and cry behind him, and he did not halt or draw
breath until he had left the soldiers far in the rear, and found himself
astray at the junction of four noisome lanes, over two of which the
projecting gables fairly met. Above the two others a scrap of sky
appeared, but this was too small to indicate in which direction the river
lay.