By six next morning the Council had returned, and their friends as they left the door hung about the street corner near by, amusing themselves by striking the lamp with their sticks.
At half-past six the Council issued, shouting—
"To the execution!"
Hache ran up the middle of the street repeating the cry in his stentorian voice, so that as he rushed along the dingy houses poured forth their contents after him like swarms of bees; boys, men, and women mingling pell-mell, half clothed, unkempt, fierce-mouthed, wild-faced, ignorant.
Motte, the beggar, took up the words and sped like the wind up the narrow side streets and lanes, shouting, "To the execution!"
Wife Gougeon screamed it. Even her husband opened his malign jaws from time to time and automatically gave vent to a harsh shout.
Thus sown, it became a cry springing up everywhere. The whole quarter of St. Marcel grew alive, and an immense crowd ran together into the neighbouring square. Little direction was needed to band them into a marching mob, waving clubs, pikes, and bottles, dancing, quarrelling and howling, with ribald songs and shouts of "To the execution!" In one thing they differed notably from a similar crowd in this century, could such be imagined. Ragged and wretched though they were, they wore colour in profusion. The mass was a rich subject for the artist.
Among the women at the front was seen Wife Gougeon brandishing her pistol. The Admiral and Hache were at her side haranguing the leaders. Surging along, the demoniac screams of drunken women and the babel of shouting men, as they approached each new neighbourhood, seemed to stir it to its depths and to add to the rear a new contingent.
Thus their numbers swelled at every street, and the excitement increased to a pitch beyond description. They swept forward by the Rue Mouffetard and through the Latin Quarter till they reached the broad Boulevard St. Germain. Turning along the latter through the Rue St. Jacques they suddenly increased their speed and uproar, and thundered across the Petit Pont Bridge and Isle of France, and once more across a bridge—that of Notre Dame—where they saw the Quai Le Pelletier on the other side lined with a black sea of people. At least a quarter of the population of Paris were crammed together within the available space upon the quays and the neighbouring streets along the Seine, from the towered Châtelet—court-house and prison—some distance below, to the Place de Grève, some distance above, in front of the Hôtel de Ville. A line of blue-coated, white-gaitered soldiers on each side kept the space clear down the centre.
The people were looking forward to the spectacle of the morning with intense delight.