“Why dost thou not speak?” she urged. “Why dost thou not implore my mercy? I could save thee if I would.”
He still did not answer.
“Ah!” she sighed, with a cruel feint of tenderness, “for the sake of the old days, Basile! Ask me, by the memory of our embraces, of thy child that I bore in my womb, to pity and protect thee!”
“You are mad,” he cried. “I have never seen you in my life.”
She struck him across the mouth. The blow, the sight of the little blood that sprang from the wound, were a double provocation to the beasts of prey. They bore him with a rush to the outer door, through it, into the yard beyond. Torn, bleeding, fighting every foot of his way, but never protesting, he would sell his life dearly to these mongrels. The yelling crowd surged and rocked before him. Suddenly—with that exaltation of the perceptions that often seems to signify the first flight-essay of the soul—he saw far back in the thick of the press of inhuman faces one face that he recognised as that of a man who, years before, on the morning of the Reveillon riots, had spoken to him, mistaking him for another. Now, from the expression of this one face, he educed a desperate hope. He gathered it from the anguish of its features, from the conviction that its owner was frantically endeavouring to thrust and beat a passage towards him through the throng. God! he thought; if he could only reach the face, he would somehow be saved.
With a furious effort he tore himself free, and snatched at and wrenched a sabre from a hand that threatened him.
“Here!” he shrieked to the face; “to meet me, monsieur—to meet me!”
He had actually cut his way a half-dozen yards before a hand—the woman’s—seized him from the back and dragged him to the ground. With a groan he fell, trampled into a forest of tattered legs.
“Cry to me for mercy!” screamed the harlot.
“No,” he answered faintly.