, which had rung through hours of the past day, was
silent. The tumult which had leaped like flame from street to street
had subsided. Peaceful men breathed again in their houses, and women, if
they still cowered by the hearth, no longer laid trembling fingers on
their ears. For a time the red fury was over: and in the narrow
channels, where at noon the mob had seethed and roared, scarcely a stray
wayfarer could now be found.

A few however were abroad: and of these some, who chanced to be
threading the network of streets between the Chatelet and the Louvre,
heard behind them the footsteps of one in great haste. Turning, they saw
pass by them a youth, wearing a sword and a student's short cloak and
cap--apparently he was a member of the University. He was pale of face,
and for his part looked neither to right nor left: saw not one of them,
and seemed bent only on getting forward.

He slackened his pace however near the corner of the Rue de Tirchape,
where it shoots out of the Rue de Bethisy; and then turning the corner
impulsively, he caught his foot in some obstacle, and, plunging forward,
would have fallen, if he had not come against a man, who seemed to be
standing still in the shadow of the corner house.

"Hold up!" exclaimed this person, withstanding the shock better than
could have been expected, for he was neither tall nor bulky. "You should
have a pretty mistress, young man, if you go to her at this pace!"

The student did not answer--did not seem to hear. He staggered against
the wall, and stood propping himself up by it. His face, pale before,
was ghastly, as he glared, horror-struck, at something beyond the
speaker. The latter, after muttering angrily, "What the plague, then, do
you go dashing about the streets like a Shrove Tuesday ox for?" turned
also and glanced behind him.

But not at that to which the student's eyes were directed. The stranger
seemed constrained to look first and by preference at the long, low
casement of a house nearly opposite them. This window was on the first
floor, and projected somewhat over the roadway. There seemed to be no
light in the room within; but the moonlight reached it, and showed a
woman's head bent on the sill--a girl's head, if one might judge from
its wealth of hair. One white wrist gleamed amid the coil, but her face
was hidden on her arms and showed not. In the whole scene--in the
casement open at this inclement time, in the girl's attitude, in her
abandonment