Obedient to their leader’s orders the three young Englishmen remained in the thick of the crowd:  together wit Deroulede they contrived to form a sturdy rampart round Juliette, effectually protecting her against rough buffetings.

On their right, towards the direction of Menilmontant, the sea-mew’s cry at intervals gave the strength and courage.

The foremost rank of the crowd had reached the portico of the building, and, with howls and snatches of their gutter song, were loudly clamouring for the guardian of the grim prison.

No one appeared; the great gates with their massive bars and hinges remained silent and defiant.

The crowd was becoming dangerous:  whispers of the victory of the Bastille, five years ago, engendered thoughts of pillage and of arson.

Then the strident voice was heard again: 

“Pardi! the prisoners are not in the Temple!  The dolts have allowed them to escape, and now are afraid of the wrath of the people!”

It was strange how easily the mob assimilated this new idea.  Perhaps the dark, frowning block of massive buildings had overawed them with its peaceful strength, perhaps the dripping rain and oozing clay had damped their desire for an immediate storming of the grim citadel; perhaps it was merely the human characteristic of a wish for something new, something unexpected.

Be that as it may, the cry was certainly taken up with marvellous, quick-change rapididy.

“The prisoners have escaped!  The prisoners have escaped!”

Some were for proceeding with the storming of the Temple, but they were in the minority.  All along, the crowd had been more inclined for private revenge than for martial deeds of valour; the Bastille had been taken by daylight; the effort might not have been so successful on a pitch-black night such as this, when one could not see one’s hand before one’s eyes, and the drizzling rain went through to the marrow.

“They’ve got through one of the barriers by now!” suggested the same voice from out the darkness.

“The barriers—­the barriers!” came in sheeplike echo from the crowd.

The little group of fugitives and their friends tightened their hold on one another.

They had understood at last.

“It is for us to see that the crowd does what we want,” the Scarlet Pimpernel had said.

He wanted it to take him and his friends out of Paris, and, by God! he was like to succeed.

Juliette’s heart within her beat almost to choking; her strong little hand gripped Deroulede’s fingers with the wild strength of a mad exultation.

Next to the man to whom she had given her love and her very soul she admired and looked up to the remarkable and noble adventurer, the high-born and exquisite dandy, who with grime-covered face, and strong limbs encased in filthy clothes, was playing the most glorious part ever enacted upon the stage.