he culprits, were
within ten paces of the door.

Menneville made a last effort. "Passage! passage!" cried he, pistol in
hand.

"Burn them! burn them!" repeated the crowd. "The Image-de-Notre-Dame
is on fire! Burn the thieves! burn the monopolists in the
Image-de-Notre-Dame!"

There now remained no doubt, it was plainly D'Artagnan's house that was
their object. D'Artagnan remembered the old cry, always so effective
from his mouth:

"A moi! mousquetaires!" shouted he, with the voice of a giant, with one
of those voices which dominate over cannon, the sea, the tempest. "A
moi! mousquetaires!" And suspending himself by the arm from the balcony,
he allowed himself to drop amidst the crowd, which began to draw back
from a house that rained men. Raoul was on the ground as soon as
he, both sword in hand. All the musketeers on the Place heard
that challenging cry--all turned round at that cry, and recognized
D'Artagnan. "To the captain, to the captain!" cried they, in their turn.
And the crowd opened before them as though before the prow of a vessel.
At that moment D'Artagnan and Menneville found themselves face to face.
"Passage, passage!" cried Menneville, seeing that he was within an arm's
length of the door.

"No one passes here," said D'Artagnan.

"Take that, then!" said Menneville, firing his pistol, almost within
arm's length. But before the cock fell, D'Artagnan had struck up
Menneville's arm with the hilt of his sword and passed the blade through
his body.

"I told you plainly to keep yourself quiet," said D'Artagnan to
Menneville, who rolled at his feet.

"Passage! passage!" cried the companions of Menneville, at first
terrified, but soon recovering, when they found they had only to do with
two men. But those two men were hundred-armed giants, the swords flew
about in their hands like the burning glaive of the archangel. They
pierce with its point, strike with the flat, cut with the edge, every
stroke brings down a man. "For the king!" cried D'Artagnan, to every man
he struck at, that is to say, to every man that fell. This cry
became the charging word for the musketeers, who guided by it, joined
D'Artagnan. During this time the archers, recovering from the panic they
had undergone, charge the aggressors in the rear, and regular as mill
strokes, overturn or knock down all that oppose them. The crowd, which
sees swords gleaming, and drops of blood flying in the air--the crowd
falls back and crushes itself. A