'There's my answer,' said Louis, raising his right arm, which was dripping; with blood, 'you have made me mount the red flag!'
'Ha!' cried the friendly fishwife, 'Wounded in the cause of the nation! Let him go.'
'He has not uttered the cry!' shouted the rest.
Louis looked round with his cool, pensive smile.
'Liberty!' he said, 'what we mean by liberty is freedom to go where we will, and say what we will. I wish you had it, my poor fellows. Fraternity—it is not shooting our brother. Egalite—I preach that too, but in my own fashion, not yours. Let me pass—si cela vou est egal.'
His nonchalant intrepidity—a quality never lost on the French—raised an acclamation of le brave Anglais. No one stirred a hand to hinder their mounting to the banquette, and several hands were held out to assist in surmounting the parapet of this extempore fortification. Isabel bowed her thanks, and Louis spoke them with gestures of courtesy; and shouts of high applause followed them as they sped along the blood-stained street.
The troops were re-forming after the repulse, and the point was to pass before the attack could be renewed, as well as not to be mistaken for the insurgents.
They were at once challenged, but a short explanation to the officer was sufficient, and they were suffered to turn into the Rue Richelieu, where they were only pursued by the distant sounds of warfare.
'Oh, Lord Fitzjocelyn!' cried Isabel, as he slackened his pace, and gasped for breath.
'You are sure you are not hurt?' he said.