neck, and skin like milk. I did not know whether she was alive
or dead; but I noticed that one arm stuck out stiffly and the
crowd flying before the sudden impact of the horses must have
passed over her, even if she had escaped the iron hoofs which
followed. Still in the fleeting glance I had of her as my horse
bounded aside, I saw no wound or disfigurement. Her one arm was
cast about the priest's breast; her face was hidden on it. But
for all that, I knew her--knew her, shuddering for the woman
whose badges I was even now wearing, whose gift I bore at my
side; and I remembered the priest's vaunt of a few hours before,
made in her presence, "There is no man in Paris shall thwart me
to-night!"

It had been a vain boast indeed! No hand in all that host of
thousands was more feeble than his now: for good or ill! No
brain more dull, no voice less heeded. A righteous retribution
indeed had overtaken him. He had died by the sword he had drawn
--died, a priest, by violence! The cross he had renounced had
crushed him. And all his schemes and thoughts, and no doubt they
had been many, had perished with him. It had come to this, only
this, the sum of the whole matter, that there was one wicked man
the less in Paris--one lump of breathless clay the more.

For her--the woman on his breast--what man can judge a woman,
knowing her? And not knowing her, how much less? For the
present I put her out of my mind, feeling for the moment faint
and cold.

We were clear of the crowd, and clattering unmolested down a
paved street before I fully recovered from the shock which this