Perhaps the dark, frowning block of massive buildings had overawed them with its peaceful strength, perhaps the dripping rain and oozing clay had damped their desire for an immediate storming of the grim citadel; perhaps it was merely the human characteristic of a wish for something new, something unexpected.
Be that as it may, the cry was certainly taken up with marvellous, quick-change rapidity.
"The prisoners have escaped! The prisoners have escaped!" Some were for proceeding with the storming of the Temple, but they were in the minority.

All along, the crowd had been more inclined for private revenge than for martial deeds of valour; the Bastille had been taken by daylight; the effort might not have been so successful on a pitch-black night such as this, when one could not see one's hand before one's eyes, and the drizzling rain went through to the marrow.
"They've got through one of the barriers by now!" suggested the same voice from out the darkness.
"The barriers--the barriers!" came in sheeplike echo from the crowd.
The little group of fugitives and their friends tightened their hold on one another.
They had understood at last.
"It is for us to see that the crowd does what we want," the Scarlet Pimpernel had said.
He wanted it to take him and his friends out of Paris, and, by God! he was like to succeed.
Juliette's heart within her beat almost to choking; her strong little hand gripped Deroulede's fingers with the wild strength of a mad exultation.
Next to the man to whom she had given her love and her very soul she admired and looked up to the remarkable and noble adventurer, the high-born and exquisite dandy, who with grime-covered face, and strong limbs encased in filthy clothes, was playing the most glorious part ever enacted upon the stage.
"To the barriers--to the barriers!" Like a herd of wild horses, driven by the whip of the herdsmen, the mob began to scatter in all directions.

Not knowing what it wanted, not knowing what it would find, half forgetting the very cause and object of its wrath, it made one gigantic rush for the gates of the great city through which the prisoners were supposed to have escaped.
The three Englishmen and Deroulede, with Juliette well protected in their midst, had not joined the general onrush as yet.

The crowd in the open place was still very thick, the outward-branching streets were very narrow: through these the multitude, scampering, hurrying, scurrying, like a human torrent let out of a whirlpool, rushed down headlong towards the barriers.
Up the Rue Turbigo to the Belleville gate, the Rue des Filles, and the Rue du Chemin Vert, towards Popincourt, they ran, knocking each other down, jostling the weaker ones on one side, trampling others underfoot.
They were all rough, coarse creatures, accustomed to these wild bousculades, ready to pick themselves up, again after any number of falls; whilst the mud was slimy and soft to tumble on, and those who did the trampling had no shoes on their feet.
They rushed out from the dark, open place, these creatures of the night, into streets darker still.
On they ran--on! on!--now in thick, heaving masses, anon in loose, straggling groups--some north, some south, some east, some west.
But it was from the east that came the seagull's cry.
The little band ran boldly towards the east.

Down the Rue de la Republique they followed their leader's call.