and had slipped out and fled in the first confusion of the
attack.

Even the servants, as we learned afterwards, who had hidden
themselves in the lower parts of the house got away in the same
manner, though some of them--they were but few in all were
stopped as Huguenots and killed before the day ended. I had the
more reason to hope that Pavannes and his wife would get clear
off, inasmuch as I had given the Duke's ring to him, thinking it
might serve him in a strait, and believing that we should have
little to fear ourselves once clear of his house; unless we
should meet the Vidame indeed.

We did not meet him as it turned out; but before we had traversed
a quarter of the distance we had to go we found that fears based
on reason were not the only terrors we had to resist. Pavannes'
house, where we had hitherto been, stood at some distance from
the centre of the blood-storm which was enwrapping unhappy Paris
that morning. It was several hundred paces from the Rue de
Bethisy where the Admiral lived, and what with this comparative
remoteness and the excitement of our own little drama, we had not
attended much to the fury of the bells, the shots and cries and
uproar which proclaimed the state of the city. We had not
pictured the scenes which were happening so near. Now in the
streets the truth broke upon us, and drove the blood from our
cheeks. A hundred yards, the turning of a corner, sufficed. We
who but yesterday left the country, who only a week before were
boys, careless as other boys, not recking of death at all, were
plunged now into the midst of horrors I cannot describe. And the
awful contrast between the sky above and the things about us!