‘There’s my answer,’ said Louis, raising his right arm, which was dripping; with blood, ‘you have made me mount the red flag!’

‘Ha!’ cried the friendly fishwife, ’Wounded in the cause of the nation!  Let him go.’

‘He has not uttered the cry!’ shouted the rest.

Louis looked round with his cool, pensive smile.

‘Liberty!’ he said, ’what we mean by liberty is freedom to go where we will, and say what we will.  I wish you had it, my poor fellows.  Fraternity—­it is not shooting our brother.  Egalite—­I preach that too, but in my own fashion, not yours.  Let me pass—­si cela vou est egal.’

His nonchalant intrepidity—­a quality never lost on the French—­ raised an acclamation of le brave Anglais.  No one stirred a hand to hinder their mounting to the banquette, and several hands were held out to assist in surmounting the parapet of this extempore fortification.  Isabel bowed her thanks, and Louis spoke them with gestures of courtesy; and shouts of high applause followed them as they sped along the blood-stained street.

The troops were re-forming after the repulse, and the point was to pass before the attack could be renewed, as well as not to be mistaken for the insurgents.

They were at once challenged, but a short explanation to the officer was sufficient, and they were suffered to turn into the Rue Richelieu, where they were only pursued by the distant sounds of warfare.

‘Oh, Lord Fitzjocelyn!’ cried Isabel, as he slackened his pace, and gasped for breath.

‘You are sure you are not hurt?’ he said.

‘Oh no, no; but you—­’

‘It is very little,’ he said—­’a stray shot—­only enough to work on their feelings.  What good-natured rogues they were.  I will only twist my handkerchief round to stop the blood.  Thank you.’

Isabel tried to help him, but she was too much afraid of hurting him to draw the bandage tight.

They dashed on, finding people on the watch for tidings, and meeting bodies of the National Guard, and when at length they reached the Place Vendome, they found the whole establishment watching for them, and Virginia flew to meet them on the stairs, throwing her arms round her sister, while Lady Conway started forward with the agitated joy, and almost anger, of one who felt injured by the fright they had made her suffer.

’There you are!  What has kept you!  Delaford said they were slaughtering every one on the Boulevards!’

‘I warned you of the consequences of taking me,’ said Louis, dropping into a chair.

‘Mamma! he is all over blood!’ screamed Virginia.

Lady Conway recoiled, with a slight shriek.

‘It is a trifle,’ said Louis;’ Isabel is safe.  There is all cause for thankfulness.  We could never have got through if she had not been every inch a heroine.’

‘Oh, Lord Fitzjocelyn, if I could thank you!’