Cold perspiration came over him while he waited there for the dilatory keeper to open the gate.

Almost as soon as he set foot on the high road, he perceived in the moonlight at the other end of the Faubourg the column of insurgents, whose gun barrels gleamed like white flames.

So it was at a run that he dived into the Impasse Saint-Mittre, and reached his mother's house, which he had not visited for many a long year..