Efforts

By and by, the crimson livery of the Boucherie mingled largely amidst the crowd. seemed made to reanimate the multitude; orators addressed them from various points; and, finally, the arrival of a prodigious rabble, armed with grisly weapons of destruction, and escorting a singular leader with the most deafening shouts, seemed to restore the courage of the Parisians. Perrinet le Clerc, mounted on a charger richly caparisoned, that had no doubt belonged to some wealthy Armagnac knight, and dressed partly in his own robes of a scholar, but with a splendid cuirass on his breast, a mantle of crimson and sables on his shoulders, and the incongruous mitre of a bishop on his head, made his glorious appearance, attended more immediately by a body-guard of students armed with pikes.

Owen was surprised at the undaunted demeanour of this dictator, in a situation apparently of so much difficulty and danger. He harangued the people, upbraided them sharply with their cowardice, and, exhorting all who would defend the free and noble city of Paris for the Duke of Burgundy, to follow him, moved off towards the supposed points of attack, pursued, after a short

hesitation by the crowds, with furious shouts and acclamations. The Burgundian knights seemed to take the example; they went on with the multitude, taking care nevertheless not to allow their ranks to mingle; and in a short time, not a single living creature, man, woman, or child, was to be discerned in the square of the Châtelet.

The anxiety with which the Armagnac prisoners awaited the result of this renewed effort for their deliverance amounted to the intensest agony. Only La Trimouille was sufficiently light-hearted or selfish to declare that, for the first time, he was glad of his captivity, since he was thus released from any danger in effecting his own release! The ill-timed jest had scarcely left his lips before the square of the Châtelet filled again as suddenly as it had emptied, and nearly with the same persons, with the exception that the regular forces of the Burgundians hung lightly on the rear of the rabble. Loud laughter and shouts of derision, with the pointing of innumerable and scornful fingers at the dense crowd of prisoners on the roof of the Châtelet, announced that the mob returned in a good humour, and consequently that

the attempt of the Armagnacs, if any was made, had failed.

The latter clause was very reasonably a subject of doubt; the absence of the multitude had been so brief, and they returned so unruffled, and so complacently escorted by the knights of L'Isle Adam! A deadly chill whitened Owen's cheek when he suddenly recollected de Giac's plan of frightening the Parisians into cruelty! He perceived that the number of the prisoners, who had all pressed up, in the fever of expectation, on the battlements, excited the attention of the populace. He spoke of this to those around them, and advised that some of them should retire; but the general anxiety and curiosity was too intense to suffer this arrangement. The imprudent audacity of La Trimouille, who imagined himself secure on his elevation, crowned the mischief. He displayed his courage by making gestures of contempt and defiance at the multitude, which speedily produced a storm of hisses, rising rapidly into a general and deafening uproar.

In the midst of this tumult and agitation, a voice like the articulate roaring of a wild beast

yelled from amidst the crowd. "Let us kill these dogs of Armagnacs that keep us in such constant trouble and starvation! Death, death to them who kill our children with hunger! They will else kill us see what a number they are!"

It seemed as if this voice merely gave utterance to the gathered sentiment of the whole multitude, so terrifically and universally was the cry repeated, till "Death to the Armagnacs!" silenced the jangle of all the affrighted belfries of Paris!

"Death to the constable !-to the Palais ! he is there!' 'To the chancellor !-he is in St. Magloire!"" shrieked voices from various quarters.

"TO ALL THE ARMAGNACS!" shouted tones whose awful utterance seemed to wreak the fury of a tempest in human sound. "Death to all the Armagnacs!" was instantly echoed in maddening uproar, as it almost appeared, over all Paris, over the entire city!

"There are Armagnacs in For l'Evêque, in St. Magloire, in St. Martin des Champs, in the Temple, in the Abbey of Tyron, and in St. Eloi!" said the executioner, Capeluche, in the methodical, unimpassioned tone of a ready-reckoner.

"And in the Grand Châtelet!" interrupted the

direful voice of Simon Caboche; and he pointed a vast poleaxe up to its tower. The very masonry seemed to tremble with the start of the gazing prisoners!

"There is the Petit-Châtelet, too," said Capeluche, coldly, "but I thought we need only reckon what is out of sight!"

"Go on who will to the Palais! to For l'Evêque! to St. Martin! St. Magloire! St. Eloi! the Temple! and Tyron !—the two Châtelets are mine!" yelled Simon Caboche. "Come on, my boys!-Remember Renaud; none will hinder us, the knights are with us!"

"What can possibly be meant? They are rolling up to our gates!" said La Trimouille.

“An universal massacre, nothing less, is meant! -Art thou the familiar of Huéline de Troye, and knowest not this?" returned Owen with the bitterest scorn, and yet with utter despair at his heart.

"Thou art so in-in reality-I do but boast! and dost thou know this?" said the courtier, whitening as if already bled to death beneath the axes of the Cabochiens.

"The Veau de Bar parleys with them-per