‘Then they will be too late for our gentlemen,’ said the Gascon; ‘for I hear them now coming in reality.’
In effect he was right. The students had evidently waited until the patrol had passed, knowing they would thus be for a certain time uninterrupted, and they now came quietly in front of the house. One of them, whom Blacquart knew to be Camille Theria, clapped his hands, and the Gascon replied to the signal.
‘They wanted to hang me the other night,’ said he; ‘but I mean to succeed better with them than they did with me. And yet,’ he added as he looked below, ‘there seems to be a great many of them.’
‘What are you waiting for?’ asked the chapelier.
‘Me? oh! nothing—nothing,’ said the Gascon. His blood was ebbing down rapidly every instant. ‘Only I was thinking if you were to make a speech from the window, and forgive them, how they would esteem you; and perhaps it would save bloodshed.’
Theria, who was below, repeated the signal.
‘Lower down your rope,’ said Maître Picard, who was peeping over the parapet.
‘Upon my honour, I don’t much like to do so,’ said Blacquart, as his last atom of heroism evaporated.
‘If you don’t let the line down immediately, I will give you into custody below as an accomplice,’ said the bourgeois, in wrathful accents.
Another impatient signal from Theria was heard; and poor Jean, in a terrible fright, proceeded to unwind the cord from its winch; whilst the hatter kept looking just over the parapet to see what was going on.