before the portal
were covered with them.

But the door stood firm. "The devil! 'tis hard and obstinate!" said one.
"It is old, and its gristles have become bony," said another. "Courage,
comrades!" resumed Clopin. "I wager my head against a dipper that you
will have opened the door, rescued the girl, and despoiled the chief
altar before a single beadle is awake. Stay! I think I hear the lock
breaking up."

Clopin was interrupted by a frightful uproar which re-sounded behind him
at that moment. He wheeled round. An enormous beam had just fallen from
above; it had crushed a dozen vagabonds on the pavement with the sound
of a cannon, breaking in addition, legs here and there in the crowd
of beggars, who sprang aside with cries of terror. In a twinkling, the
narrow precincts of the church parvis were cleared. The locksmiths,
although protected by the deep vaults of the portal, abandoned the door
and Clopin himself retired to a respectful distance from the church.

"I had a narrow escape!" cried Jehan. "I felt the wind, of it,
_tete-de-boeuf_! but Pierre the Slaughterer is slaughtered!"

It is impossible to describe the astonishment mingled with fright which
fell upon the ruffians in company with this beam.

They remained for several minutes with their eyes in the air, more
dismayed by that piece of wood than by the king's twenty thousand
archers.

"Satan!" muttered the Duke of Egypt, "this smacks of magic!"

"'Tis the moon which threw this log at us," said Andry the Red.

"Call the moon the friend of the Virgin, after that!" went on Francois
Chanteprune.

"A thousand popes!" exclaimed Clopin, "you are all fools!" But he did
not know how to explain the fall of the beam.

Meanwhile, nothing could be distinguished on the facade, to whose summit
the light of the torches did not reach. The heavy beam lay in the middle
of the enclosure, and groans were heard from the poor wretches who had
received its first shock, and who had been almost cut in twain, on the
angle of the stone steps.

The King of Thunes, his first amazement passed, finally found an
explanation which appeared plausible to his companions.

"Throat of God! are the canons defending themselves? To the sack, then!
to the sack!"

"To the sack!" repeated the rabble, with a furious hurrah. A discharge
of crossbows and hackbuts against the front of the church followed.

At this detonation, the peaceable inhabitants of the surrounding houses
woke up; many