s, not to be impeded by the
multitude, presently set a guard at the street door. The mob below was
already drunk with blood, and found waiting intolerable; but it had no
leader and foamed aimlessly about the causeway. There were women in it
with flying hair like Maenads, who shrilled obscenities, and drunken
butchers and watermen and grooms who had started out for loot and
ended in sheer lust of slaying, and dozens of broken desperadoes and
led-captains who looked on the day as their carnival. But to the mob had
come one of those moments of indecision when it halted and eddied like a
whirlpool.

Suddenly in its midst appeared two tall horsemen.

"Men of Paris," cried Gaspard with that masterful voice which is born
of the deep seas. "You see this jewel. It was given me an hour back by
Henry of Guise."

A ruffian examined it. "Ay," he murmured with reverence, "it is our
Duke's. I saw it on his breast before Coligny's house."

The mob was all ears. "I have the Duke's command," Gaspard went on. "He
pursues Montgomery and the Vidame of Chartres. Coligny is dead. Teliguy
in there is about to die. But where are all the others? Where is La
Rochefoucault? Where is Rosny? Where is Grammont? Where, above all, are
the young Conde and the King of Navarre?"

The names set the rabble howling. Every eye was on the speaker.

Gaspard commanded silence. "I will tell you. The Huguenots are cunning
as foxes. They planned this very day to seize the King and make
themselves masters of France. They have copied your badge," and he
glanced towards his left arm. "Thousands of them are waiting for
revenge, and before it is full day they will be on you. You will not
know them, you will take them for your friends, and you will have your
throats cut before you find out your error."

A crowd may be wolves one moment and chickens the next, for cruelty
and fear are cousins. A shiver of apprehension went through the soberer
part. One drunkard who shouted was clubbed on the head by his neighbour.
Gaspard saw his chance.

"My word to you--the Duke's word--is to forestall this devilry. Follow
me, and strike down every band of white-badged Huguenots. For among them
be sure is the cub of Navarre."

It was the leadership which the masterless men wanted. Fifty swords
were raised, and a shout went up which shook the windows of that lodging
where even now Teliguy was being done to death. With the two horsemen at
their head the rabble poured westwards t