supplication of Cephyse, who asked, as a last favor, to
accompany Jacques to the Hospital. When the mournful procession quitted
the great room of the eating-house, there was a general flight among the
guests. Men and women made haste to wrap themselves in their cloaks, in
order to conceal their costumes. The coaches, which had been ordered in
tolerable number for the return of the masquerade, had luckily
arrived. The defiance had been fully carried out, the audacious bravado
accomplished, and they could now retire with the honors of war. Whilst a
part of the guests were still in the room, an uproar, at first distant,
but which soon drew nearer, broke out with incredible fury in the square
of Notre Dame.

Jacques had been carried to the outer door of the tavern. Morok and
Ninny Moulin, striving to open a passage through the crowd in the
direction of the Hospital, preceded the litter. A violent reflux of
the multitude soon forced them to stop, whilst a new storm of savage
outcries burst from the other extremity of the square, near the angle of
the church.

"What is it then?" asked Ninny Moulin of one of those ignoble figures
that was leaping up before him. "What are those cries?"

"They are making mince-meat of a poisoner, like him they have thrown
into the river," replied the man. "If you want to see the fun, follow me
close," added he, "and peg away with your elbows, for fear you should be
too late."

Hardly had the wretch pronounced these words than a dreadful shriek
sounded above the roar of the crowd, through which the bearers of the
litter, preceded by Morok, were with difficulty making their way. It
was Cephyse who uttered that cry. Jacques (one of the seven heirs of the
Rennepont family) had just expired in her arms! By a strange fatality,
at the very moment that the despairing exclamation of Cephyse announced
that death, another cry rose from that part of the square where they
were attacking the poisoner. That distant, supplicating cry, tremulous
with horrible alarm, like the last appeal of a man staggering beneath
the blows of his murderers, chilled the soul of Morok in the midst of
his execrable triumph.

"Damnation!" cried the skillful assassin, who had selected drunkenness
and debauchery for his murderous but legal weapons; "it is the voice of
the Abbe d'Aigrigny, whom they have in their clutches!"

CHAPTER XXIII. THE POISONER.

It is necessary to go back a little before relating the adventure