Lazet, as loyal as he was courageous, would not accept assistance from his friends. He continually called out:
“Keep away; let me fight it out alone!”
But the others were too excited to remain inactive spectators of the scene.
“A quilt!” cried one of them, “a quilt to make the marquis jump!”
Five or six young men now rushed upon Gaston, and separated him from Lazet. Some tried to throw him down, others to trip him up.
He defended himself with the energy of despair, exhibiting in his furious struggles a strength of which he himself had not been conscious. He struck right and left as he showered fierce epithets upon his adversaries for being twelve against one.
He was endeavoring to get around the billiard-table so as to be near the door, and had almost succeeded, when an exultant cry arose:
“Here is the quilt! the quilt!” they cried.
“Put him in the quilt, the pretty fairy’s lover!”
Gaston heard these cries. He saw himself overcome, and suffering an ignoble outrage at the hands of these enraged men.