The quarryman stopped short, and then fell back a couple of paces, so much was he amazed at this sudden apparition, and impressed, like the rest of the crowd, with a vague feeling of admiration and respect at sight of him who had come so miraculously to the aid of Father d’Aigrigny.  It was Gabriel.  The young missionary remained standing on the threshold of the door.  His long black cassock was half lost in the shadows of the cathedral; whilst his angelic countenance, with its border of long light hair, now pale and agitated by pity and grief, was illumined by the last faint rays of twilight.  This countenance shone with so divine a beauty, and expressed such touching and tender compassion, that the crowd felt awed as, with his large blue eyes full of tears, and his hands clasped together, he exclaimed, in a sonorous voice:  “Have mercy, my brethren!  Be humane—­be just!”

Recovering from his first feeling of surprise and involuntary emotion, the quarryman advanced a step towards Gabriel, and said to him:  “No mercy for the poisoner! we must have him!  Give him up to us, or we go and take him!”

“You cannot think of it, my brethren,” answered Gabriel; “the church is a sacred place—­a place of refuge for the persecuted.”

“We would drag our prisoner from the altar!” answered the quarryman, roughly; “so give him up to us.”

“Listen to me, my brethren,” said Gabriel, extending his arms towards them.

“Down with the shaveling!” cried the quarryman; “let us go in and hunt him up in the church!”

“Yes, yes!” cried the mob, again led away by the violence of this wretch, “down with the black gown!”

“They are all of a piece!”

“Down with them!”

“Let us do as we did at the archbishop’s!”

“Or at Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois!”

“What do our likes care for a church?”

“If the priests defend the poisoners, we’ll pitch them into the water too!”

“Yes, yes!”

“I’ll show you the lead!” cried the quarryman; and followed by Ciboule, and a good number of determined men, he rushed towards Gabriel.

The missionary, who for some moments had watched the increasing fury of the crowd, had foreseen this movement; hastily retreating into the church, he succeeded, in spite of the efforts of the assailants, in nearly closing the door, and in barricading it by the help of a wooden bar, which he held in such a manner as would enable the door to resist for a few minutes.

Whilst he thus defended the entrance, Gabriel shouted to Father d’Aigrigny:  “Fly, father! fly through the vestry! the other doors are fastened.”

The Jesuit, overpowered by fatigue, covered with contusions, bathed in cold sweat, feeling his strength altogether fail, and too soon fancying himself in safety, had sunk, half fainting, into a chair.  At the voice of Gabriel, he rose with difficulty, and, with a trembling step, endeavored to reach the choir, separated from the rest of the church by an iron railing.