Until again above the babel a man cried "Silence!"
and again they listened. And this time, dulled by walls and distance,
but unmistakable by the ears of fear or hate, the heavy note of a bell
came to them on the hot night air. It was the boom, sullen and menacing,
of the death signal.
The doorkeepers lowered their pikes, and with a wild rush, as of wolves
swarming on their prey, the band stormed the door, and thrust and
struggled and battled a way down the narrow staircase, and along the
narrow passage. "A bas les Huguenots! Mort aux Huguenots!" they
shouted; and shrieking, sweating, spurning with vile hands, viler faces,
they poured pell-mell into the street, and added their clamour to the
boom of the tocsin that, as by magic and in a moment, turned the streets
of Paris into a hell of blood and cruelty. For as it was here, so it was
in a dozen other quarters.
Quickly as they streamed out--and to have issued more quickly would have
been impossible--fiercely as they pushed and fought and clove their way,
Tignonville was of the foremost. And for a moment, seeing the street
clear before him and almost empty, the Huguenot thought that he might do
something. He might outstrip the stream of rapine, he might carry the
alarm; at worst he might reach his betrothed before harm befell her.
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