The
escape was known! Would the fugitives have time to slip out below?
Some one knocked at the door, tried it, pushed and beat on it. But the
Countess and all in the room had run to the windows and were looking out.
If the two had not yet made their escape they must be taken. Yet no; as
the Countess leaned from the window, first one dusty figure and then a
second darted from a door below, and made for the nearest turning, out of
the Place Ste.-Croix. Before they gained it, four men, of whom, Badelon,
his grey locks flying, was first, dashed out in pursuit, and the street
rang with cries of "Stop him! Seize him! Seize him!" Some one--one of
the pursuers or another--to add to the alarm let off a musket, and in a
moment, as if the report had been a signal, the Place was in a hubbub,
people flocked into it with mysterious quickness, and from a neighbouring
roof--whence, precisely, it was impossible to say--the crackling fire of
a dozen arquebuses alarmed the city far and wide.
Unfortunately, the fugitives had been baulked at the first turning.
Making for a second, they found it choked, and, swerving, darted across
the Place towards St.-Maurice, seeking to lose themselves in the
gathering crowd. But the pursuers clung desperately to their skirts,
overturning here a man and there a child; and then in a twinkling,
Tignonville, as he ran round a booth, tripped over a peg and fell, and La
Tribe stumbled over him and fell also.
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