"Stand back!" cried Turbo; "stand back, at your peril! I am the Chancellor. Can you not see? Stand back! I command you."
"And I, sink me!" cried the officer, drawing his sabre, "am the king, and the general, and the beggar emperor all in one; so let her go, and take that for your insolent lie."
As he uttered the word, he gave the Chancellor a wringing blow across the shoulders with the flat of his sabre. Turbo drew back; but the officer spurred on to repeat the chastisement. "Let her go, you scurvy hound! Let her go, I say! or, 'sblood! you shall have the edge."
Turbo saw but one way to escape the now infuriated soldier. In a frenzy of passion to be so balked again, he brutally thrust the blinded girl before the restive horse, so that to avoid trampling on her the officer had to curb it on to its haunches. With ungainly activity the Chancellor took advantage of the delay to spring along the wall towards the spot where, as in all the houses in the city, a door gave him admission into his own garden.
"Stop the cur! stop him!" cried the officer. "Cut him down, or anything. Zounds! will you let him laugh at our noses like this?"
Two men wheeled like hawks at the hurrying Chancellor with uplifted sabres. In another instant it seemed he must be slashed with the gleaming blade that was nearest him, when suddenly he stopped and turned. There was a flash, a sharp report, a cloud of smoke, and the gendarme threw up his hands with a choking cry. The officer dashed to his side to seize the assassin; but as he cleared the smoke he found the man he sought had vanished.
At the door which he fancied he had heard shut he drew rein. It was there he suspected the man had escaped him, and leaping from his saddle, he applied his head to the keyhole and listened intently. The sound of halting footsteps within fell faintly on his ear, and he shifted his attitude to hear better. Presently he drew back into the middle of the street, carefully surveyed the premises, and after giving a long low whistle to himself, he returned to the wounded man with a very serious air. Three or four saddles were empty, and a sergeant who was kneeling by a motionless body looked up as his commander drew near.
"Is he hurt?" asked the officer.
The sergeant did not answer, but slowly removed his helmet. The officer and all the men did the same, and stood round in silence, till the dying man gave a shudder and then lay quite still.
"Right lung, sir," said the sergeant laconically.