I can shut my eyes now and see the stupid wonder, the baulked ferocity of those gaping faces.  Dull and savage as the men were they were impressed; they saw reason indeed, and all seemed going well for us when some one in the rear shouted, “Cursed whelps!  Throw them over!”

I looked swiftly in the direction whence the voice came—­the darkest corner of the room the corner by the shuttered window.  I thought I made out a slender figure, cloaked and masked—­a woman’s it might be but I could not be certain and beside it a couple of sturdy fellows, who kept apart from the herd and well behind their fugleman.

The speaker’s courage arose no doubt from his position at the back of the room, for the foremost of the assailants seemed less determined.  We were only three, and we must have gone down, barricade and all, before a rush.  But three are three.  And an arquebuse—­Croisette’s match burned splendidly—­well loaded with slugs is an ugly weapon at five paces, and makes nasty wounds, besides scattering its charge famously.  This, a good many of them and the leaders in particular, seemed to recognise.  We might certainly take two or three lives:  and life is valuable to its owner when plunder is afoot.  Besides most of them had common sense enough to remember that there were scores of Huguenots —­genuine heretics—­to be robbed for the killing, so why go out of the way, they reasoned, to cut a Catholic throat, and perhaps get into trouble.  Why risk Montfaucon for a whim? and offend a man of influence like the Vicomte de Caylus, for nothing!

Unfortunately at this crisis their original design was recalled to their minds by the same voice behind, crying out, “Pavannes!  Where is Pavannes?”

“Ay!” shouted the butcher, grasping the idea, and at the same time spitting on his hands and taking a fresh grip of the axe, “Show us the heretic dog, and go!  Let us at him.”

“M. de Pavannes,” I said coolly—­but I could not take my eyes off the shining blade of that man’s axe, it was so very broad and sharp—­“is not here!”

“That is a lie!  He is in that room behind you!” the prudent gentleman in the background called out.  “Give him up!”

“Ay, give him up!” echoed the man of the pole-axe almost good humouredly, “or it will be the worse for you.  Let us have at him and get you gone!”

This with an air of much reason, while a growl as of a chained beast ran through the crowd, mingled with cries of “A Mort Les Huguenots!  Vive Lorraine!”—­cries which seemed to show that all did not approve of the indulgence offered us.

“Beware, gentlemen, beware,” I urged, “I swear he is not here!  I swear it, do you hear?”

A howl of impatience and then a sudden movement of the crowd as though the rush were coming warned me to temporize no longer.  “Stay!  Stay!” I added hastily.  “One minute!  Hear me!  You are too many for us.  Will you swear to let us go safe and untouched, if we give you passage?”