He leaned back and caught his aide-de-camp by the arm.

“We must have light,” he shouted.  “Dismount a dozen men and fire a house.”

At the order, men swung from their saddles, and in a few minutes the house was ablaze; its windows, red with fire, cast a dancing glow on the tumult of the street.  They pressed on, the fire sparkling on their accoutrements, and on the housetops cowering Jews broke into tremblings at a wild hope that here was salvation.  The Prince peered anxiously about, unconcerned at all the savagery that was unloosened to each side of him.  He did not pause to aid a woman dragged shrieking from a doorway by the hair, nor look back at that other scream when a dragoon, unmanned and overwrought, reined from the ranks and cut her assailant down.

At one point the crowd was thick about the gate of a walled courtyard, thundering on it with crowbars and axes; here, again, the Prince paused to look sharply among them, lest somewhere there might be a brown head and a pale clear-cut face that he sought.  Even as he tightened his bridle, the gate gave rendingly; he turned his head as the mob, roaring, poured in.  For the space of perhaps a second he sat motionless and stricken, but it was long enough to see what he never forgot—­a woman, composed, serene, bright against her dark background in the shifting light of the burning house, gay in saffron and white.  Then the mob surged before her and hid her, and his voice returned to him.

“Charge!” he roared, and tore his sword out.

The dragoons, eager enough, followed him; the courtyard overflowed with them as their great horses thundered in at the gate, and the long swords got to their work on that packed and cornered throng.  There were swift bitter passages as the troopers cleared the place—­ episodes such as only Jews knew till then, ghastly killings of men who crawled among the horses’ feet and were hunted out to be slaughtered.  And in the middle of it, the Prince was on his knees, holding up a brown head in the crook of his arm, seeing nothing of the butchery at his elbow.

It was when the killing was done, and the dragoons were clearing the street, that there arrived on tiptoe Monsieur Vaucher, searching through tears for Madame.  When he saw her he ceased to weep, but stood looking down, with his hands clasped behind his back.

“Dead?” he asked abruptly.

The Prince glanced up.  “Yes,” he answered.

“Ah!” Monsieur Vaucher pondered.  “Who killed her?” he asked presently.

“Look!” said the Prince, and motioned with one hand to the dragoons’ leavings, the very silent citizens who lay about on the flagstones.

“Ah!” said Vaucher again.  “And to-morrow the world will ask for an account.  It is not wise to destroy a great genius like this, here in a corner of your dirty town.  That is what you have to learn.”

“Yes,” said the Prince.  “We shall learn something now.  She gave her life to teach it.  There will be no more Judenhetze in this city.”