on finding
ourselves on the skirts of the crowd. Before us was a bridge--the Pont
au Change, I think--and at its head on our side of the water stood the
CHATELET, with its hoary turrets and battlements. Between us and the
latter, and backed only by the river, was a great open space
half-filled with people, mostly silent and watchful, come together as
to a show, and betraying, at present at least, no desire to take an
active part in what was going on.

We hurriedly plunged into the throng, and soon caught the clue to the
quietness and the lack of movement which seemed to prevail, and which
at first sight had puzzled us. For a moment the absence of the
dreadful symptoms we had come to know so well--the flying and pursuing,
the random blows, the shrieks and curses and batterings on doors, the
tipsy yells, had reassured us. But the relief was short-lived. The
people before us were under control. A tighter grip seemed to close
upon our hearts as we discerned this, for we knew that the wild fury of
the populace, like the rush of a bull, might have given some chance of
escape--in this case as in others. But this cold-blooded ordered
search left none.

Every face about us was turned in the same direction; away from the
river and towards a block of old houses which stood opposite to it.
The space immediately in front of these was empty, the people being
kept back by a score or so of archers of the guard set at intervals,
and by as many horsemen, who kept riding up and down, belabouring the
bolder spirits with the flat of their swords, and so preserving a line.
At each extremity of this--more noticeably on our left where the line
curved round the angle of the buildings--stood a handful of riders,
seven in a group perhaps. And alone in the middle of the space so kept
clear, walking his horse up and down and gazing at the houses rode a
man of great stature, booted and armed, the feather nodding in his
bonnet. I could not see his face, but I had no need to see it. I knew
him, and groaned aloud. It was Bezers!

I understood the scene better now. The horsemen, stern, bearded
Switzers for the most part, who eyed the rabble about them with grim
disdain, and were by no means chary of their blows, were all in his
colours and armed to the teeth. The order and discipline were of his
making: the revenge of his seeking. A grasp as of steel had settled
upon our friend, and I felt that his last chance was gone. Louis de
Pavann