Tavannes laughed.  “Bungler!” he cried.  “Were you in my troop I would dip your trigger-finger in boiling oil to teach you to shoot!  But you weary me, dogs.  I must teach you a lesson, must I?” And he lifted a pistol and levelled it.  The crowd did not know whether it was the one he had discharged or another, but they gave back with a sharp gasp.  “I must teach you, must I?” he continued with scorn.  “Here, Bigot, Badelon, drive me these blusterers!  Rid the street of them!  A Tavannes!  A Tavannes!”

Not by word or look had he before this betrayed that he had supports.  But as he cried the name, a dozen men armed to the teeth, who had stood motionless under the Croix du Tiroir, fell in a line on the right flank of the crowd.  The surprise for those nearest them was complete.  With the flash of the pikes before their eyes, with the cold steel in fancy between their ribs, they fled every way, uncertain how many pursued, or if any pursuit there was.  For a moment the mob, which a few minutes before had seemed so formidable that a regiment might have quailed before it, bade fair to be routed by a dozen pikes.

And so, had all in the crowd been what he termed them, the rabble and sweepings of the streets, it would have been.  But in the heart of it, and felt rather than seen, were a handful of another kidney; Sorbonne students and fierce-eyed priests, with three or four mounted archers, the nucleus that, moving through the streets, had drawn together this concourse.  And these with threats and curse and gleaming eyes stood fast, even Tavannes’ dare-devils recoiling before the tonsure.  The check thus caused allowed those who had budged a breathing space.  They rallied behind the black robes, and began to stone the pikes; who in their turn withdrew until they formed two groups, standing on their defence, the one before the window, the other before the door.

Count Hannibal had watched the attack and the check, as a man watches a play; with smiling interest.  In the panic, the torches had been dropped or extinguished, and now between the house and the sullen crowd which hung back, yet grew moment by moment more dangerous, the daylight fell cold on the littered street and the cripple’s huddled form prone in the gutter.  A priest raised on the shoulders of the lean man in black began to harangue the mob, and the dull roar of assent, the brandished arms which greeted his appeal, had their effect on Tavannes’ men.  They looked to the window, and muttered among themselves.  It was plain that they had no stomach for a fight with the Church, and were anxious for the order to withdraw.

But Count Hannibal gave no order, and, much as his people feared the cowls, they feared him more.  Meanwhile the speaker’s eloquence rose higher; he pointed with frenzied gestures to the house.  The mob groaned, and suddenly a volley of stones fell among the pikemen, whose corselets rattled under the shower.  The priest seized that moment.  He sprang to the ground, and to the front.  He caught up his robe and waved his hand, and the rabble, as if impelled by a single will, rolled forward in a huge one-fronted thundering wave, before which the two handfuls of pikemen—­afraid to strike, yet afraid to fly—­were swept away like straws upon the tide.