ery effort to maintain
the door, which was now vigorously assailed. "Make haste! In a few
minutes it will be too late. All alone!" continued the missionary, in
despair, "alone, to arrest the progress of these madmen!"

He was indeed alone. At the first outbreak of the attack, three or four
sacristans and other members of the establishment were in the church;
but, struck with terror, and remembering the sack of the archbishop's
palace, and of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, they had immediately taken
flight. Some of them had concealed themselves in the organ-loft and
others fled into the vestry, the doors of which they locked after them,
thus cutting off the retreat of Gabriel and Father d'Aigrigny. The
latter, bent double by pain, yet roused by the missionary's portentive
warning, helping himself on by means of the chairs he met with on his
passage, made vain efforts to reach the choir railing. After advancing
a few steps, vanquished by his suffering, he staggered and fell upon the
pavement, deprived of sense and motion. At the same moment, Gabriel,
in spite of the incredible energy with which the desire to save Father
d'Aigrigny had inspired him, felt the door giving way beneath the
formidable pressure from without.

Turning his head, to see if the Jesuit had at least quitted the church,
Gabriel, to his great alarm, perceived that he was lying motionless at
a few steps from the choir. To abandon the half-broken door, to run
to Father d'Aigrigny, to lift him in his arms, and drag him within
the railing of the choir, was for the young priest an action rapid as
thought; for he closed the gate of the choir just at the instant that
the quarryman and his band, having finished breaking down the door,
rushed in a body into the church.

Standing in front of the choir, with his arms crossed upon his
breast, Gabriel waited calmly and intrepidly for this mob, still more
exasperated by such unexpected resistance.

The door once forced, the assailants rushed in with great violence. But
hardly had they entered the church, than a strange scene took place. It
was nearly dark; only a few silver lamps shed their pale light round
the sanctuary, whose far outlines disappeared in the shadow. On suddenly
entering the immense cathedral, dark, silent, and deserted, the most
audacious were struck with awe, almost with fear in presence of the
imposing grandeur of that stony solitude. Outcries and threats died away
on the lips of the most furious.