Tignonville would fain have avoided the ordeal of the register, but the clerk’s eye was on him.  He had been fortunate so far, but he knew that the least breath of suspicion would destroy him, and summoning his wits together he gave his name in a steady voice.  “Anne Desmartins.”  It was his mother’s maiden name, and the first that came into his mind.

“Of Paris?”

“Recently; by birth, of the Limousin.”

“Good, Monsieur,” the clerk answered, writing in the name.  And he turned to the next.  “And you, my friend?”

CHAPTER IV.  THE EVE OF THE FEAST.

It was Tignonville’s salvation that the men who crowded the long white-walled room, and exchanged vile boasts under the naked flaring lights, were of all classes.  There were butchers, natives of the surrounding quarter whom the scent of blood had drawn from their lairs; and there were priests with hatchet faces, who whispered in the butchers’ ears.  There were gentlemen of the robe, and plain mechanics, rich merchants in their gowns, and bare-armed ragpickers, sleek choristers, and shabby led-captains; but differ as they might in other points, in one thing all were alike.  From all, gentle or simple, rose the same cry for blood, the same aspiration to be first equipped for the fray.  In one corner a man of rank stood silent and apart, his hand on his sword, the working of his face alone betraying the storm that reigned within.  In another, a Norman horse-dealer talked in low whispers with two thieves.  In a third, a gold-wire drawer addressed an admiring group from the Sorbonne; and meantime the middle of the floor grew into a seething mass of muttering, scowling men, through whom the last comers, thrust as they might, had much ado to force their way.

And from all under the low ceiling rose a ceaseless hum, though none spoke loud.  “Kill! kill! kill!” was the burden; the accompaniment such profanities and blasphemies as had long disgraced the Paris pulpits, and day by day had fanned the bigotry—­already at a white heat—­of the Parisian populace.  Tignonville turned sick as he listened, and would fain have closed his ears.  But for his life he dared not.  And presently a cripple in a beggar’s garb, a dwarfish, filthy creature with matted hair, twitched his sleeve, and offered him a whetstone.

“Are you sharp, noble sir?” he asked, with a leer.  “Are you sharp?  It’s surprising how the edge goes on the bone.  A cut and thrust?  Well, every man to his taste.  But give me a broad butcher’s knife and I’ll ask no help, be it man, woman, or child!”

A bystander, a lean man in rusty black, chuckled as he listened.

“But the woman or the child for choice, eh, Jehan?” he said.  And he looked to Tignonville to join in the jest.

“Ay, give me a white throat for choice!” the cripple answered, with horrible zest.  “And there’ll be delicate necks to prick to-night!  Lord, I think I hear them squeal!  You don’t need it, sir?” he continued, again proffering the whetstone.  “No?  Then I’ll give my blade another whet, in the name of our Lady, the Saints, and good Father Pezelay!”