Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
http://books.google.com/books?ei=0r4yT5jOC4Hm0QGA9ezTBw
Copyright, 1897,
by
CHARLES H. SERGEL COMPANY.
Paris had never seemed to the eye more peaceful than on a certainNovember evening in the year 1589: and this although many a one withinits walls resented the fineness of that night as a mockery, a scoff atthe pain of some and the fury of others.
The moonlight fell on roofs and towers, on the bare open space of thePlace de Grève and the dark mass of the Louvre, and only here andthere pierced, by chance, a narrow lane, to gleam on some foul secretof the kennel. The Seine lay a silvery loop about the He de la Cité--aloop cut on this side and that by the black shadows of the Pont auChange, and the Petit Pont, and broken again westward by the outlineof the New Bridge, which was then in building.
The city itself lay in profound quiet in the depth of the shadow. Fromtime to time at one of the gales, or in the lodge of the Châtelet, asentinel challenged or an officer spoke. But the bell of St. Germainl'Auxerrois, which had rung through hours of the past day was silent.The tumult which had leaped like flame from street to street hadsubsided. Peaceful men breathed again in their houses, and women, ifthey still cowered by the hearth, no longer laid trembling fingers ontheir ears. For a time the red fury was over: and in the narrowchannels, where at noon the mob had seethed, scarcely a stray wayfarercould now be found.
A few however were abroad: and of these some who chanced to bethreading the network of streets between the Châtelet and the Louvre,heard behind them the footsteps of a man in great haste, and saw passthem a youth, white-faced and wearing a sword and a student's shortcloak and cap--apparently a member of the University. He for his partlooked neither to right nor left: saw not one of them, and seemed bentonly on getting forward.
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