Gilbert sought to enter with them to protect Flesselles. He had not run up three steps before he felt himself pulled back by the coatskirts. He turned to shake off the hand but saw they were of Billet and Pitou.
From the higher standpoint he overlooked the square.
"What is going on over there?" he inquired, pointing towards a spot of commotion.
"Come, doctor, come," said the two countrymen together.
At that instant Major Losme fell, struck down by a hatchet; in their hatred the people confounded the persecutor of the prisoners with the merciful warden.
"Let us begone," said the physician, "for I begin to be ashamed that such murderers let me out."
"Do not say that, doctor," reproved Billet, "those who stormed the Bastile are not the cutthroats yonder."
As they descended the steps which he had mounted to try to help Flesselles, the throng which had flowed through the doorway, was hurled forth. In the midst of the battling gathering one man was struggling.
"Take him to the Palais Royal," vociferated the thousands.
"Yes, my friends, yes, my good friends, to the Palais Royal," gasped this wretch.
But the human inundation rolled towards the river as though it intended to drown him.
"Another they mean to murder," shouted Gilbert; "let us try to save him at any rate."
But he had hardly got the words out of his mouth before a pistol-shot resounded; Flesselles disappeared in the smoke.
Gilbert covered his eyes, cursing the multitude, great but unable to remain pure, and sullying the victory by a triple murder.
When he took his hands from his eyes, he beheld three heads on pike points: Flesselles', Launay's and Losme's. One rose on the City Hall steps, another in the mouth of Tixeranderie Street and the last in Pelletier Street, so that the trio formed a triangle. He remembered the sign in the Order of the Invisibles.
"Oh, Balsamo," he muttered, "is this the emblem of Liberty?"
And sighing, he fled up Vannerie Street, dragging Billet and Pitou with him.
Meeting with a public conveyance, the doctor got into it with Billet and Pitou, and they went to Louis-the-Great College, where Sebastian was still in the sick ward.
The principal received the doctor with deep regard as he knew him to be the foremost pupil of the physicians and chemists, Cabanis and Condorcet.