A voice in the crowd, some twenty paces, perhaps, was raised to shout: "Yet another of them!" Immediately after the voice came a pistol-shot, and a bullet flattened itself against the bronze figure just behind Andre-Louis.
Instantly there was turmoil in the crowd, most intense about the spot whence the shot had been fired.

The assailant was one of a considerable group of the opposition, a group that found itself at once beset on every side, and hard put to it to defend him.
From the foot of the plinth rang the voice of the students making chorus to Le Chapelier, who was bidding Andre-Louis to seek shelter.
"Come down! Come down at once! They'll murder you as they murdered La Riviere." "Let them!" He flung wide his arms in a gesture supremely theatrical, and laughed.

"I stand here at their mercy.

Let them, if they will, add mine to the blood that will presently rise up to choke them.

Let them assassinate me.