Five seconds, ten, perhaps; but in that space of time, short as it was, the man paid smartly for the sins of his life.
When the time of grace had elapsed, with a pike-point a few inches from his back and the gleaming eyes of an avenging burgher behind it, he fled shrieking round the table.

He might even yet have escaped by a chance; for all was confusion, and though there was a glare there was no light.
But he stumbled over the body of the man whom he had slain without pity a few hours before.

He fell writhing, and died on the floor, under a dozen blows, as beasts die in the shambles.
"Mere Royaume! Mere Royaume!" The cry--the last cry he heard--swelled louder and louder.

It swept through the gate, it passed through to the open, and bore far along the Corraterie, far along the ramparts, ay, to the open country, the earnest of victory, the earnest of vengeance.
Geneva was saved.

He who would have betrayed it, slain like Pyrrhus the Epirote by a woman's hand, lay dead in the dark lane behind the house in which he had lived..