dier next to Maurevel; after which De Mouy, finding himself
weaponless, or at least with useless weapons, for his pistols had been
fired and his adversaries were beyond the reach of his sword, took
shelter behind the balcony gallery.

Meantime here and there windows began to be thrown open in the
neighborhood, and according to the pacific or bellicose dispositions of
their inhabitants, were barricaded or bristled with muskets and
arquebuses.

"Help! my worthy Mercandon," shouted De Mouy, beckoning to an elderly
man who, from a window which had just been thrown open in front of the
Hotel de Guise, was trying to make out the cause of the confusion.

"Is it you who call, Sire de Mouy?" cried the old man: "are they
attacking you?"

"Me--you--all the Protestants; and wait--there is the proof!"

That moment De Mouy had seen La Huriere aim his arquebuse at him; it was
fired; but the young man had time to stoop, and the ball broke a window
above his head.

"Mercandon!" exclaimed Coconnas, who, in his delight at sight of this
fray, had forgotten his creditor, but was reminded of him by De Mouy's
apostrophe; "Mercandon, Rue du Chaume--that is it! Ah, he lives there!
Good! Each of us will settle accounts with our man."

And, while the people from the Hotel de Guise were breaking in the doors
of De Mouy's house, and Maurevel, with a torch in his hand, was trying
to set it on fire--while now that the doors were once broken, there was
a fearful struggle with a single antagonist who at each rapier-thrust
brought down his foe--Coconnas tried, by the help of a paving-stone, to
break in Mercandon's door, and the latter, unmoved by this solitary
effort, was doing his best with his arquebuse out of his window.

And now all this dark and deserted quarter was lighted up, as if by open
day,--peopled like the interior of an ant-hive; for from the Hotel de
Montmorency six or eight Huguenot gentlemen, with their servants and
friends, had just made a furious charge, and, supported by the firing
from the windows, were beginning to repulse Maurevel's and the De
Guises' force, who at length were driven back to the place whence they
had come.

Coconnas, who had not yet succeeded in smashing Mercandon's door, though
he was working at it with all his might, was caught in this sudden
retreat. Placing his back to the wall, and grasping his sword firmly, he
began not only to defend himself, but to attack his assailants, with
cries so terrible t