as if he would descend
also.

"Come back, sir!" he called, as loudly as he dared. "M. de Tignonville,
come back! This is folly or worse!"

But M. de Tignonville was gone.

La Tribe listened a while, unable to believe it, and still expecting his
return. At last, hearing nothing, he slid, greatly excited, to the
ground and looked out. It was not until he had peered up and down the
lane and made sure that it was empty that he could persuade himself that
the other had gone for good. Then he climbed slowly and seriously to his
place again, and sighed as he settled himself.

"Unstable as water thou shalt not excel!" he muttered. "Now I know why
there was only one egg."

Meanwhile Tignonville, after putting a hundred yards between himself and
his bedfellow, plunged into the first dark entry which presented itself.
Hurriedly, and with a frowning face, he cut off his left sleeve from
shoulder to wrist; and this act, by disclosing his linen, put him in
possession of the white sleeve which he had once involuntarily donned,
and once discarded. The white cross on the cap he could not assume, for
he was bareheaded. But he had little doubt that the sleeve would
suffice, and with a bold demeanour he made his way northward until he
reached again the Rue Ferronerie.

Excited groups were wandering up and down the street, and, fearing to
traverse its crowded narrows, he went by lanes parallel with it as far as
the Rue St. Denis, which he crossed. Everywhere he saw houses gutted and
doors burst in, and traces of a cruelty and a fanaticism almost
incredible. Near the Rue des Lombards he saw a dead child, stripped
stark and hanged on the hook of a cobbler's shutter. A little farther on
in the same street he stepped over the body of a handsome young woman,
distinguished by the length and beauty of her hair. To obtain her
bracelets, her captors had cut off her hands; afterwards--but God knows
how long afterwards--a passer-by, more pitiful than his fellows, had put
her out of her misery with a spit, which still remained plunged in her
body.

M. de Tignonville shuddered at the sight, and at others like it. He
loathed the symbol he wore, and himself for wearing it; and more than
once his better nature bade him return and play the nobler part. Once he
did turn with that intention. But he had set his mind on comfort and
pleasure, and the value of these things is raised, not lowered, by danger
and uncertainty. Quickly his st