'Ladies first. Marshal. I must look to my bride.'
Then through the smoke I saw de Gomeron's tall figure mounting the stair, and I rushed forward to follow him.
It was at this juncture that a portion of our own party forced their way to the landing, and one of them, whose sword was broken, flung himself upon me, dagger in hand, shouting, 'Death to traitors.' I had just time to seize his wrist. He tripped sideways over something that lay very quiet at our feet, and, dragging me down, we rolled over and over, with the clash of blades over us. 'It is I—fool—I, d'Auriac—let go,' I shouted, as he tried to stab at me.
'Let go you,' sputtered d'Aubusson's voice, and we loosed each other. I had no time for another word, and grasping my sword, which was hanging to my wrist by the knot, I sprang up, and the next moment was hot foot after de Gomeron.
I managed somehow to force my way through the crowd, but the stairway was half-full of men, and at the head of it stood the free-lance, with a red sword in his hand, and two or three huddled objects that lay in shapeless masses around him.
Some one, with a reckless indifference to his own life—it was, I afterwards found out, Pantin—held up a torch, and as the flare of it shot up the stairway de Gomeron threw back his head and laughed at us.
'Twenty to one—come, gentlemen—or must I come to you?' He took a couple of steps down the stairs, and the crowd, that had made as if it would rush him, wavered and fell back, bearing me, hoarse with shouting for way, with them to the landing.
For the moment, penned up and utterly unable to get forward, I was a mere spectator to what followed.
The free-lance took one more downward step, and then a slight figure, with one arm in a sling, slid out from the press and flew at him.
It was d'Ayen, and I felt a sudden warming of the heart to the man who was going to his death.