the hospital. That won't do, young
man!"

The agent made a gesture to seize his suspect, but at that moment Jean
saw two other agents in the distance walking rapidly to join their
comrade. He upper-cut the man sharply, catching him squarely on the
point of the chin and sending him to grass with a mangled and bleeding
tongue.

There appeared to be no help for it, but the young man now had two
fresh pursuers. At any rate, he was free. It would be to his shame, he
thought, if he could not distance two men in heavy cowhide boots,
encumbered with cloaks and sabres. So he started down the Rue de la
Tombe-Issoire with a lead of some two hundred yards. He saw lights and
a crowd and heard music in the Place St. Jacques, and knew that he was
saved.

The Place St. Jacques was en fete. A band-stand occupied the spot long
sacred to the guillotine, up to its last removal to La Roquette. The
immediate neighborhood of Place St. Jacques would have preferred the
guillotine and an occasional execution as a holiday enjoyment, but
next to witnessing the sanguinary operation of the "national razor," a
dance was the popular idea of amusement. And the Parisian populace
must be amused. The government considers that a part of its duty, and
encourages the "bal du carrefour" by the erection of stands and
providing music at the general expense. It was the saturnine humor of
Place St. Jacques to dance where men lost their heads. However, it
would be difficult to find a street crossing in Paris big enough to
dance in that had not been through the centuries soaked with human
blood.

It was a little fresher in Place St. Jacques, that was all.

The band-stand being on the exact place marked in the stone pavement
for the guillotine, it gave a sort of peculiar piquancy to the
occasion. While the proprietors of the adjacent wine-shops and "zincs"
grumbled at the new order of things, the young people were making the
best of Mardi Gras in hilarious fashion.

Though Place St. Jacques presented a lively scene beneath its
scattered lights, it was one common enough to Jean Marot, who now only
saw in the romping crowd and spectators the means of shaking off his
police pursuers. Among the hundred dancers he made his way to the most
compact body of lookers-on, where the indications were that something
unusually interesting was in progress. Here the blown condition of a
student would not be noticed.

Yells of delight from those in his immediate vicinity aw