But the Place Maubert was left unguarded, and a rabble rout--all night
long--was collecting in that distant spot. Four companies of burgher-
guards went over to the League at three o'clock in the morning. The rest
stood firm in the cemetery of the Innocents, awaiting the orders of the
King. At day-break on the 11th the town was still quiet. There was an
awful pause of expectation. The shops remained closed all the morning,
the royal troops were drawn up in battle-array, upon the Greve and around
the Hotel de Ville, but they stood motionless as statues, until the
populace began taunting them with cowardice, and then laughing them to
scorn. For their sovereign lord and master still sat paralyzed in his
palace.

The mob had been surging through all the streets and lanes, until,
as by a single impulse, chains were stretched across the streets, and
barricades thrown up in all the principal thoroughfares. About noon the
Duke of Guise, who had been sitting quietly in his hotel, with a very few
armed followers, came out into the street of the Hotel Montmorency, and
walked calmly up and down, arm-in-aim with the Archbishop of Lyons,
between a double hedge-row of spectators and admirers, three or four
ranks thick. He was dressed in a white slashed doublet and hose, and
wore a very large hat. Shouts of triumph resounded from a thousand
brazen throats, as he moved calmly about, receiving, at every instant,
expresses from the great gathering in the Place Maubert.

"Enough, too much, my good friends," he said, taking off the great hat--
("I don't know whether he was laughing in it," observed one who was
looking on that day)--"Enough of 'Long live Guise!' Cry 'Long live the
King!'"

There was no response, as might be expected, and the people shouted more