"Well, devil take her anyhow,—she's gone. And I'm here."
He saw himself, with many others out of the line of blocked vehicles, hemmed in by agents, Gardes de Paris, and cuirassiers to the right and left, now driven into the Rue Royale as stray animals into a pound.
Double lines of police agents supported by infantry and cavalry held both ends of this short street; here, where it opened into the Place de la Concorde and there where it led at the Madeleine into the grand boulevards.
The roar of the mob came down upon him from the Madeleine, where the rioters had forced the defensive line from time to time only to be driven back by the fists and feet of the police agents and with the flat of the cavalry sabre.
The authorities knew their ground. The Rue Royale was the key to the military position.
But in the attempt to clear the Place de la Concorde the nearest fugitives were thrust into the Rue Royale and driven by horse and foot towards the Madeleine, where they were mercilessly kicked outside the lines to shift for themselves, an unwilling part of a frenzied mob.
"I'm a rat in a trap here," growled the young man, having been literally thrown through the lower cordon by two stalwart agents.
The shopkeepers had put up their heavy shutters. The grilles were closed. People looked down from window and balcony upon a street sealed as tight as wax.
Having witnessed the infantry reserves ambushed behind the Ministry of Marine filling their magazines, and being confronted by a fresh émeute above, Jean Marot began to feel queer for the first time of a day of brawls.
He recalled the historical fact that here in this narrow street a thousand people were slain in a panic on the occasion of the celebration of the marriage of Marie Antoinette.