Deroulede’s grasp tightened on Juliette’s little hand.

“Are you frightened, my beloved?” he whispered.

“Not whilst you are near me,” she murmured in reply.

A few more minutes’ walk up the Rue des Archives and they were in the thick of the crowd.  Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, Lord Anthony Dewhurst, and Lord Hastings, the three Englishmen, were in front; Deroulede and Juliette immediately behind them.

The mob itself now carried them along.  A motley throng they were, soaked through with the rain, drunk with their own baffled rage, and with the brandy which they had imbibed.

Everyone was shouting; the women louder than the rest; one of them was dragging the length of rope, which might still be useful.

“Ca ira! ca ira!  A la lanterne!  A la lanterne! les traitres!”

And Deroulede, holding Juliette by the hand, shouted lustily with them: 

“Ca ira!”

Sir Andrew Ffoulkes turned, and laughed.  It was rare sport for these young bucks, and they all entered into the spirit of the situation.  They all shouted “A la lanterne!” egging and encouraging those around them.

Deroulede and Juliette felt the intoxication of the adventure.  They were drunk with the joy of their reunion, and seized with the wild, mad, passionate desire for freedom and for life...  Life and love!

So they pushed and jostled on in the mud, followed the crowd, sang and yelled louder than any of them.  Was not that very crowd the great bulwark of their safety?

As well have sought for the proverbial needle in the haystack, as for two escaped prisoners in this mad, heaving throng.

The large open space in front of the Temple Prison looked like one great, seething, black mass.

The darkness was almost thick here, the ground like a morass, with inches of clayey mud, which stuck to everything, whilst the sparse lanterns, hung to the prison walls and beneath the portico, threw practically no light into the square.

As the little band, composed of the three Englishmen, and of Deroulede, holding Juliette by the hand, emerged into the open space, they heard a strident cry, like that of a sea-mew thrice repeated, and a hoarse voice shouting from out the darkness: 

“Ma foi! I’ll not believe that the prisoners are in the Temple now!  It is my belief, friends, citizens, that we have been fooled once more!”

The voice, with its strange, unaccountable accent, which seemed to belong to no province of France, dominated the almost deafening noise; it penetrated through, even into the brandy-soddened minds of the multitude, for the suggestion was received with renewed shouts of the wildest wrath.

Like one great, living, seething mass the crowd literally bore down upon the huge and frowning prison.  Pushing, jostling, yelling, the women screaming, the men cursing, it seemed as if that awesome day—­ the 14th of July—­was to have its sanguinary counterpart to-night, as if the Temple were destined to share the fate of the Bastille.