Almost immediately hooting broke out:
"Look! look!—The tom-cat's up there! After the cat! after the cat!"
The mob had just seen Maigrat on the roof of the shed. In his fever of anxiety he had climbed the palings with agility in spite of his weight, and without troubling over the breaking wood; and now he was flattening himself along the tiles, and endeavouring to reach the window. But the slope was very steep; he was incommoded by his stoutness, and his nails were torn. He would have dragged himself up, however, if he had not begun to tremble with the fear of stones; for the crowd, which he could not see, continued to cry beneath him:
"After the cat! after the cat!—Do for him!"
And suddenly both his hands let go at once, and he rolled down like a ball, leapt at the gutter, and fell acr
