“The roof has fallen in,” said M. le Comte quietly, as we rushed to the parapet. “That is the end of it.”
The flames leaped high into the air with a roar like the passing of a mighty wind over a great forest. The mob seemed for the moment to have forgotten us in the grandeur of that spectacle; but always at the foot of the tower that little group of armed men stood apart.
The sudden burst of light threw their faces into strong relief, and Pasdeloup, who had been staring down at them, uttered a sharp cry.
“He is there!” he said. “He is there!”
“Who is there, Pasdeloup?” demanded his master.
“Goujon! See!—that one with the cloak about him—there at the right!”
Quick as a flash M. le Comte snatched out his pistol, levelled it and fired. There was a cry of pain from below and a man fell—but it was not Goujon. M. le Comte put up his pistol with an oath of anger and disappointment.
But hell itself had broken loose and such a fusillade of bullets rained against the tower that we were forced to retire from the parapet. All the fury of the ages seemed whirled upon us; all the blind madness which centuries of oppression and injustice had engendered. Those of the mob who were unarmed danced shrieking about the tower, shaking their fists at it, or assailed the great stones with their nails. It seemed that the very uproar was enough to shake it from its foundation.
“That was not wise,” said Pasdeloup gloomily. “It was the one thing Goujon needed.”
“I know it!” confessed his master, and wiped his forehead with a shaking hand. “Yet I would have risked it gladly had I only killed that scoundrel. I must kill him—I must kill him. I could not rest in my grave with him alive!”