The uniform of the king's guard was in itself a passport anywhere, and the face of old Catinat was so well known in the district that everyone drew back to clear a path for him towards his house.

The door was flung open for them, and an old servant stood wringing his hands in the dark passage.
"Oh, master! Oh, master!" he cried.
"Such doings, such infamy! They will murder him!" "Whom, then ?" "This brave monsieur from America.

Oh, my God, hark to them now!" As he spoke, a clatter and shouting which had burst out again upstairs ended suddenly in a tremendous crash, with volleys of oaths and a prolonged bumping and smashing, which shook the old house to its foundations.

The soldier and the Huguenot rushed swiftly up the first flight of stairs, and were about to ascend the second one, from the head of which the uproar seemed to proceed, when a great eight-day clock came hurtling down, springing four steps at a time, and ending with a leap across the landing and a crash against the wall, which left it a shattered heap of metal wheels and wooden splinters.

An instant afterwards four men, so locked together that they formed but one rolling bundle, came thudding down amid a _debris_ of splintered stair-rails, and writhed and struggled upon the landing, staggering up, falling down, and all breathing together like the wind in a chimney.