The quarryman stopped short, and then fell back a couple of paces, so much was he amazed at this sudden apparition, and impressed, like the rest of the crowd, with a vague feeling of admiration and respect at sight of him who had come so miraculously to the aid of Father d’Aigrigny. It was Gabriel. The young missionary remained standing on the threshold of the door. His long black cassock was half lost in the shadows of the cathedral; whilst his angelic countenance, with its border of long light hair, now pale and agitated by pity and grief, was illumined by the last faint rays of twilight. This countenance shone with so divine a beauty, and expressed such touching and tender compassion, that the crowd felt awed as, with his large blue eyes full of tears, and his hands clasped together, he exclaimed, in a sonorous voice: “Have mercy, my brethren! Be humane—be just!”
Recovering from his first feeling of surprise and involuntary emotion, the quarryman advanced a step towards Gabriel, and said to him: “No mercy for the poisoner! we must have him! Give him up to us, or we go and take him!”
“You cannot think of it, my brethren,” answered Gabriel; “the church is a sacred place—a place of refuge for the persecuted.”
“We would drag our prisoner from the altar!” answered the quarryman, roughly; “so give him up to us.”
“Listen to me, my brethren,” said Gabriel, extending his arms towards them.
[Original]
“Down with the shaveling!” cried the quarryman; “let us go in and hunt him up in the church!”
“Yes, yes!” cried the mob, again led away by the violence of this wretch, “down with the black gown!”
“They are all of a piece!”