It was first blood for us. From behind Villon was drawn back out of reach of the point at his throat, over went the table between us—Martin saving himself by a backward leap—and what happened thereafter I cannot tell. Twice I was hurt; once by a stone on the shoulder, and once by a stab instinctively parried in the dark by my left arm. But the putting out of the light saved us. Through the windows a straggle of moonbeams fell on the yelling, rascally mob, but left us in gloom. If they were outlines we were shadows, so like the fuller darkness as to be hardly visible, and the shadows had the advantage. Of two things the room seemed full; noise, the din of cursing voices, shuffling feet, groans, obscenities, and a faint play of light like the flight of dull fireflies as the moon caught the twisting flats of steel.
Then the end came, but from without, not from within; a knocking at the inn door that grew louder and louder, and as it grew the babel within sobered. The kennel crew knew its meaning better than we. By ones and twos, and then in a swarm, the mob fled. François the First and Last, King of Song, and High Priest of all the rest of his blatancy, heard Montfauçon call for the fourth time, and had no heart to dance upon nothing to the music of that sinister voice.
CHAPTER VII
THE SHREWDEST BRAIN IN FRANCE
By the provost's lantern we were able to count losses. Martin had a cut upon the forehead which, dribbling down by the corner of his mouth, gave him a pitiful appearance, but meant little. The thickness of his skull, he said, saved him. Monsieur Narbonne's companion had his own wounds to lament, and Mademoiselle's guard was cursing softly in a language I did not understand over a palm slashed in warding off a two-edged dagger. If it was French he spoke, it was no French that I had ever heard. Monseigneur was unhurt, and my own bruises were no worse than three or four days would see cured.
Beyond the table the damage was not much greater. Of the three on the floor, and the two afterwards found in the court, only he who had received Martin's first thrust had forestalled the hangman. For the rest, Toute beste garde sa pel, had been Villon's motto, and his fellow rabble had echoed it.
At first it seemed as if we would join the other four upon the gallows, and so settle our quarrel with equal honours. But drawing the provost aside, Monseigneur showed him some token which turned the midnight of his face to a smiling noon, and if we had but expressed the wish, he would have dangled his four prisoners from the newly-painted sign there and then. "In any case it is but three days' delay," said he cheerfully, "and if the first loiters but a little, all five can travel home together."
Next he was anxious to see Monseigneur safe to his lodgings, but was met by a firm refusal.
"I know my Paris. In the open street so large a party is safe. These," and he paused, looking doubtfully at us, nor, in the faint yellow light of the smoky lantern was our appearance prepossessing, "these—um—gentlemen had better join my friends."
"So, so!" And in his zeal that the extreme justice of the law might not be cheated three days later, even by such pitiful wretches as we, the provost caught Martin by the arm. "Monseigneur does not know these—um—gentlemen?"