Escaped!  But for how long?  We soon had our answer.  The moment we turned the corner by the river-side, the murmur of a multitude not loud but continuous, struck our ears, even as the breeze off the water swept our cheeks.  Across the river lay the thousand roofs of the Ile de la Cite, all sparkling in the sunshine.  But we swept to the right, thinking little of that sight, and checked our speed on finding ourselves on the skirts of the crowd.  Before us was a bridge—­the Pont au Change, I think—­and at its head on our side of the water stood the CHATELET, with its hoary turrets and battlements.  Between us and the latter, and backed only by the river, was a great open space half-filled with people, mostly silent and watchful, come together as to a show, and betraying, at present at least, no desire to take an active part in what was going on.

We hurriedly plunged into the throng, and soon caught the clue to the quietness and the lack of movement which seemed to prevail, and which at first sight had puzzled us.  For a moment the absence of the dreadful symptoms we had come to know so well—­the flying and pursuing, the random blows, the shrieks and curses and batterings on doors, the tipsy yells, had reassured us.  But the relief was short-lived.  The people before us were under control.  A tighter grip seemed to close upon our hearts as we discerned this, for we knew that the wild fury of the populace, like the rush of a bull, might have given some chance of escape—­in this case as in others.  But this cold-blooded ordered search left none.

Every face about us was turned in the same direction; away from the river and towards a block of old houses which stood opposite to it.  The space immediately in front of these was empty, the people being kept back by a score or so of archers of the guard set at intervals, and by as many horsemen, who kept riding up and down, belabouring the bolder spirits with the flat of their swords, and so preserving a line.  At each extremity of this—­more noticeably on our left where the line curved round the angle of the buildings—­stood a handful of riders, seven in a group perhaps.  And alone in the middle of the space so kept clear, walking his horse up and down and gazing at the houses rode a man of great stature, booted and armed, the feather nodding in his bonnet.  I could not see his face, but I had no need to see it.  I knew him, and groaned aloud.  It was Bezers!

I understood the scene better now.  The horsemen, stern, bearded Switzers for the most part, who eyed the rabble about them with grim disdain, and were by no means chary of their blows, were all in his colours and armed to the teeth.  The order and discipline were of his making:  the revenge of his seeking.  A grasp as of steel had settled upon our friend, and I felt that his last chance was gone.  Louis de Pavannes might as well be lying on his threshold with his dead servant by his side, as be in hiding within that ring of ordered swords.