"Wait! wait!" shouted two municipal officers; "no roughness. It shall be opened to you."
Indeed, by pressing on the spring-catch they released the two gates, which drew aside, and the mass rushed through.
Along with them came the cannon, which crossed the yard with them, mounted the steps, and reached the head of the stairs in their company. Here stood the city officials in their scarfs of office.
"What do you intend doing with a piece of artillery?" they challenged. "Great guns in the royal apartments! Do you believe anything is to be gained by such violence?"
"Quite right," said the ringleaders, astonished themselves to see the gun there; and they turned it round to get it down-stairs. The hub caught on the jamb, and the muzzle gaped on the crowd.
"Why, hang them all, they have got cannon all over the palace!" commented the new-comers, not knowing their own artillery.
Police-Magistrate Mouchet, a deformed dwarf, ordered the men to chop the wheel clear, and they managed to hack the door-jamb away so as to free the piece, which was taken down to the yard. This led to the report that the mob were smashing all the doors in.
Some two hundred noblemen ran to the palace, not with the hope of defending it, but to die with the king, whose life they deemed menaced. Prominent among these was a man in black, who had previously offered his breast to the assassin's bullet, and who always leaped like a last Life-Guard between danger and the king, from whom he had tried to conjure it. This was Gilbert.
After being excited by the frightful tumult, the king and queen became used to it.
It was half past three, and it was hoped that the day would close with no more harm done.