Passing through it, I found the same disorder ruling; here men, bringing up powder from the cellars, blocked the passage; there others appeared to be rifling the house. I had little hope of finding those whom I sought below stairs; and after glancing this way and that without result, I lighted on a staircase, and ascending quickly to the second floor, hastened to Denise's room. The door was locked.
I hammered on it madly and called, and waited, and listened, and called again; but I heard no sound from within; convinced at last. I left it and tried the nearest doors. The two first were locked also, and the rooms as silent; the third and fourth were open and empty. The last I entered was a man's.
The task was no long one, and occupied less than a minute. But all the time, while I rapped and listened and called, though the corridor in which I moved was quiet as death and echoed my footsteps, the house below rang with cries and shouts and hurrying feet; and I was in a fever. Madame might be on the roof. I turned that way meaning to ascend. Then I reflected that if I climbed to it I might find the staircase blocked when I came to descend again; and, cursing my folly for leaving the hall--simply because my quest had failed--I hurried back to the stairs, and dashed recklessly down them, and, stemming as well as I could the tide of people that surged and ebbed about the lower floor, I fought my way back to the hall.
I was just in time. As I entered by one door Froment entered by the other, with a little band of his braves; of whom several, I now observed, wore green ribbons--the Artois colours. His great stature raising him above the crowd of heads, I saw that he was wounded; a little blood was running down his cheek, and his eyes shone with a brilliance almost of madness. But he was still cool; he had still so much the command, not only of himself, but of those round him, that the commotion grew still and abated under his eye. In a moment men who before had only tumbled over and embarrassed one another, flew to their places; and, though the howling of a hostile mob could plainly be heard at the end of the street, and it was clear that he had fallen back before an overwhelming force, resolution seemed in a moment to take the place of panic, and hope of despair.
Standing on the threshold, and pointing this way, and that, with a discharged pistol which he held in his hand, he gave a few short, sharp orders for the barricading of the door, and saw them carried out, and sent this man to one post, and that man to another. Then, the crowd, which had before cumbered the place, melting as if by magic, he saw me forcing my way to him. And he beckoned to me.
If he played a part, then let me say, once for all, he played it nobly. Even now, when I guessed that all was lost, I read no fear and no envy in his face; and in what he said there was no ostentation.
"Get out quickly," he muttered, in an undertone, forestalling by a hasty gesture the excited questions I had on my lips, "through yonder door, and by the little postern at the foot of the other staircase. Go by the east gate, and you will find horses at the St. Geneviève outside. It is all over here!" he added, wringing my hand hard, and pushing me towards the door.
"But Mademoiselle?" I cried; and I told him that she was not in the house.
"What?" he said, pausing and looking at me, with his face grown suddenly dark. "Are you mad? Do you mean that she has gone out?"
"She is not here," I answered. "I am told that she went to the church with Madame St. Alais, and has not returned."