the town, twisting like rabbit-burrows, lighted only here and there with
a stray lamp socketed to a stone wall. Now he had left the big-thoughted
age of the Romans, and was carried forward to the crafty, treacherous
Middle Ages. In such an alley as this, bravos had lurked with daggers
ready to thrust between the shoulder-blades of their victims. Now he was
in a wider lane through which an army had swept pell-mell to slay and
sack, while from the overhanging windows above desperate men and women
shot wildly in fruitless resistance. Now he was in another of the
lightless rabbit-burrows....

A sudden sharp cry of fear cut out like a whip-lash into the blackness.
A woman's cry. There were sounds of angry struggle as Rivière made
swiftly to the aid of that woman who cried out in fear.

Stumbling round a corner of the twisting alley, he came to where a gleam
from a shuttered window showed a slatted glimpse of a woman struggling
in the arms of a lean, wiry peasant of the Camargue. Rivière seized him
by the collar and shook him off as one shakes a dog from the midst of a
fray. The man loosed his grip of the woman, and snarling like a dog,
writhed himself free of Rivière. Then, whipping out a knife from his
belt, he struck again and again. Rivière tried to ward with his left
arm, but one blow of the knife went past the guard and ripped his cheek
from forehead to jawbone.

At that moment a shutter thrown open shot as it were a search-light into
the blackness of the alley, full on to the man with the knife, and
Rivière, putting his whole strength into the blow, sent a smashing
right-hander straight into the face of his adversary. Thrown back
against the alley-wall, the man rebounded forward, and fell, a huddled,
nerveless mass, on the ground.