back, for, being a bachelor, he had no
one to restrain him. Him I saw turned round as you would turn a
_roulette_. He was thrown against my wife in his tempestuous course, and
but that she was so light and elastic in her tread, gliding out straight
and softly like one of the saints, I think he must have thrown her down.
And at that moment, silent as we all were, his '_Pardon, Madame, mille
pardons, Madame_,' and his tone of horror at his own indiscretion,
seemed to come to me like a voice out of another life. Partially roused
before by the sudden impulse of resistance I have described, I was yet
more roused now. I turned round, disengaging myself from my mother.
'Where are we going? why are we thus cast forth? My friends, help!' I
cried. I looked round upon the others, who, as I have said, had also
awakened to a possibility of resistance. M. de Bois-Sombre, without a
word, came and placed himself by my side; others started from the crowd.
We turned to resist this mysterious impulse which had sent us forth. The
crowd surged round us in the uncertain light.

Just then there was a dull soft sound, once, twice, thrice repeated. We
rushed forward, but too late. The gates were closed upon us. The two
folds of the great Porte St. Lambert, and the little postern for
foot-passengers, all at once, not hurriedly, as from any fear of us, but
slowly, softly, rolled on their hinges and shut--in our faces. I rushed
forward with all my force and flung myself upon the gate. To what use?
it was so closed as no mortal could open it. They told me after, for I
was not aware at the moment, that I burst forth with cries and
exclamations, bidding them 'Open, open in the name of God!' I was not
aware of what I said, but it seemed to me that I heard a voice of which
nobody said anything to me, so that it would seem to have been unheard
by the others, saying with a faint sound as of a trumpet, 'Closed--in
the name of God.' It might be only an echo, faintly brought back to me,
of the words I had myself said.

There was another change, however, of which no one could have any doubt.
When I turned round from these closed doors, though the moment before
the darkness was such that we could not see the gates closing, I found
the sun shining gloriously round us, and all my fellow-citizens turning
with one impulse, with a sudden cry of joy, to hail the full day.

_Le grand jour!_ Never in my life did I feel the full happiness of it,
the full sense of t