I looked below me.  There swung the sign of the Amour de Dieu.  And there beside it stood a homespun figure surely known to me.  There was no mistaking that bald pate.  I yelled at the top of my lungs: 

“Maitre Jacques!”

He looked up, gaping at this voice out of the sky, but, despite his amazement, I saw that he knew me.

“Maitre Jacques!  We’re being murdered!  We can’t get out!  Help us for the love of Christ!  Bring a plank, a rope, to the window there!”

For an instant he stood confounded.  Then he vanished into the inn.

I waited, on fire.  Still from the next room sounded the clash of steel.  White shirt and black doublet passed the door in turn, unflagging, ungaining.

Suddenly came a new noise from the passage, of trampling and rending, blows and oaths.  My first thought was that they were fighting out there, that rescuers had come.  Then, as I listened, I learned better.  Despairing of kicking down the door, they were tearing out a piece of stair-rail for a battering-ram.  It would not long stand against that.

I ran back to the window.  No Jacques appeared.  We were lost, lost!

Hark, from the next room a cry, a fall!  Well, were it Lucas’s victory, he might kill me as well as another.  I walked into the back room.  But it was Lucas who lay prone.

“Come, come!” I cried, clutching monsieur’s wrist.  But he would not till with Lucas’s own misericorde he had given him coup de grace.

Crash!  Crash!  The upper panel shivered in twain.  A great splinter six inches wide, hanging from the top, blocked the opening.  A hand came through to wrench it away.

M. Etienne, across the room at a leap, drove his knife through the hand, nailing it to the wood.  On the instant he recognized its owner.

“Good morning, Peyrot.  We’ve recovered the packet.”

Not waiting for further amenities, I seized my lord and dashed him into the front room, only a faint hope to lead me, but the oaths of the bravos a good spur.  And, St. Quentin be thanked, there in the garret window were Jacques and his tapsters, pushing a ladder to us.

“Go, monsieur!  There are four behind us.  Go!”

“You first!”

But I, who had snatched up his sword as he stabbed Lucas, ran back to guard the door.  He had the sense to see there was no good arguing.  Crying, “Quick after me, Felix!” he crawled out on the ladder.

Peyrot was released.  Another blow from the ram, and the door fell to finders.  They leaped in over the table like a freshet over a dam.  I darted to the window.  M. Etienne was in the garret, helping hold the ladder for me.  I flung myself upon it all too eagerly.  Like a lath it snapped.

XXXI

"The very pattern of a king."

The next world appeared to be strangely like this.  I found myself lying on a straw bed in a little low attic, my head resting comfortably on some one’s shoulder, while some one else poured wine down my gullet.  Presently I discovered that Maitre Jacques’s was the ministering hand, M. Etienne’s the shoulder.  After all, this was not heaven, but still Paris.