But
when he had sped fifty yards, his heart sank. True, none passed him; but
under the spell of the alarm-bell the stones themselves seemed to turn to
men. Houses, courts, alleys, the very churches vomited men. In a
twinkling the street was alive with men, roared with them as with a
rushing tide, gleamed with their lights and weapons, thundered with the
volume of their thousand voices. He was no longer ahead, men were
running before him, behind him, on his right hand and on his left. In
every side-street, every passage, men were running; and not men only, but
women, children, furious creatures without age or sex. And all the time
the bell tolled overhead, tolled faster and faster, and louder and
louder; and shots and screams, and the clash of arms, and the fall of
strong doors began to swell the maelstrom of sound.
He was in the Rue St. Honore now, and speeding westward. But the flood
still rose with him, and roared abreast of him. Nay, it outstripped him.
When he came, panting, within sight of his goal, and lacked but a hundred
paces of it, he found his passage barred by a dense mass of people moving
slowly to meet him. In the heart of the press the light of a dozen
torches shone on half as many riders mailed and armed; whose eyes, as
they moved on, and the furious gleaming eyes of the rabble about them,
never left the gabled roofs on their right.
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