Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France

The tears filled the Countess's eyes as she looked westwards and southwards. "Vrillac is there!" she cried; and she pointed. "I smell the sea!"

"Ay!" he answered, almost under his breath. "It lies there! And no more than thirty leagues from us! With fresh horses we might see it in two days!"

Badelon's voice broke in on them. "Forward!" he cried as they reached the southern bank. "En avant!" And, obedient to the word, the little party, refreshed by the short respite, took the road out of Ponts de Cé at a steady trot. Nor was the Countess the only one whose face glowed, being set southwards, or whose heart pulsed to the rhythm of the horses' hoofs that beat out "Home!" Carlat's and Madame Carlat's also. Javette even, hearing from her neighbour that they were over the Loire, plucked up courage; while La Tribe, gazing before him with moistened eyes, cried "Comfort" to the scared and weeping girl who clung to his belt. It was singular to see how all sniffed the air as if already it smacked of the sea and of the south; and how they of Poitou sat their horses as if they asked nothing better than to ride on and on and on until the scenes of home arose about them. For them the sky had already a deeper blue, the air a softer fragrance, the sunshine a purity long unknown!

Was it wonderful, when they had suffered so much on that northern bank? When their experience during the month had been comparable only with the direst nightmare? Yet one among them, after the first impulse of relief and satisfaction, felt differently. Tignonville's gorge rose against the sense of compulsion, of inferiority. To be driven forward after this fashion, whether he would or no, to be placed at the beck of every base-born man-at-arms, to have no clearer knowledge of what had happened or of what was passing, or of the peril from which they fled, than the women among whom he rode-these things kindled anew the sullen fire of hate. North of the Loire there had been some excuse for his inaction under insult; he had been in the man's country and power. But south of the Loire, within forty leagues of Huguenot Niort, must he still suffer, still be supine?

His rage was inflamed by a disappointment he presently underwent. Looking back as they rode clear of the wooden houses of Ponts de Cé, he missed Tavannes and several of his men; and he wondered if Count Hannibal had remained on his own side of the river. It seemed possible; and in that event La Tribe and he and Carlat might deal with Badelon and the four who still escorted them. But when he looked back a minute later, Tavannes was within sight, following the party with a stern face; and not Tavannes only. Bigot, with two of the ten men who hitherto had been missing, was with him.

It was clear, however, that they brought no good news, for they had scarcely ridden up before Count Hannibal cried "Faster! faster!" in his harshest voice, and Bigot urged the horses to a quicker trot. Their course lay almost parallel with the Loire in the direction of Beaupréau; and Tignonville began to fear that Count Hannibal intended to recross the river at Nantes, where the only bridge below Angers spanned the stream. With this in view it was easy to comprehend his wish to distance his pursuers before he recrossed.

The Countess had no such thought. "They must be close upon us!" she murmured, as she urged her horse in obedience to the order.

"Whoever they are!" Tignonville muttered bitterly. "If we knew what had happened, or who followed, we should know more about it, madame. For that matter, I know what I wish he would do. And our heads are set for it."

"What?"

"Make for Vrillac!" he answered, a savage gleam in his eyes.

"For Vrillac?"

"Yes."

"Ah, if he would!" she cried, her face turning pale. "If he would. He would be safe there!"

"Ay, quite safe!" he answered with a peculiar intonation. And he looked at her askance.

He fancied that his thought, the thought which had just flashed into his brain, was her thought; that she had the same notion in reserve, and that they were in sympathy. And Tavannes, seeing them talking together, and noting her look and the fervour of her gesture, formed the same opinion, and retired more darkly into himself. The downfall of his plan for dazzling her by a magnanimity unparalleled and beyond compare, a plan dependent on the submission of Angers-his disappointment in this might have roused the worst passions of a better man. But there was in this man a pride on a level at least with his other passions: and to bear himself in this hour of defeat and flight so that if she could not love him she must admire him, checked in a strange degree the current of his rage. When Tignonville presently looked back he found that Count Hannibal and six of his riders had pulled up and were walking their horses far in the rear. On which he would have done the same himself; but Badelon called over his shoulder the eternal "Forward, monsieur, en avant!" and sullenly, hating the man and his master more deeply every hour, Tignonville was forced to push on, with thoughts of vengeance in his heart.

Trot, trot! Trot, trot! Through a country which had lost its smiling wooded character and grew more sombre and less fertile the farther they left the Loire behind them. Trot, trot! Trot, trot! – for ever, it seemed to some. Javette wept with fatigue, and the other women were little better. The Countess herself spoke seldom except to cheer the Provost's daughter; who, poor girl, flung suddenly out of the round of her life and cast among strangers, showed a better spirit than might have been expected. At length, on the slopes of some low hills, which they had long seen before them, a cluster of houses and a church appeared; and Badelon, drawing rein, cried, "Beaupréau, madame! We stay an hour!"

It was six o'clock. They had ridden some hours without a break. With sighs and cries of pain the women dropped from their clumsy saddles, while the men laid out such food-it was little-as had been brought, and hobbled the horses that they might feed. The hour passed rapidly, and when it had passed Badelon was inexorable. There was wailing when he gave the word to mount again; and Tignonville, fiercely resenting this dumb, reasonless flight, was at heart one of the mutineers. But Badelon said grimly that they might go on and live, or stay and die, as it pleased them; and once more they climbed painfully to their saddles, and jogged steadily on through the sunset, through the gloaming, through the darkness, across a weird, mysterious country of low hills and narrow plains which grew more wild and less cultivated as they advanced. Fortunately the horses had been well saved during the long leisurely journey to Angers, and now went well and strongly. When they at last unsaddled for the night in a little dismal wood within a mile of Clisson, they had placed some forty miles between themselves and Angers.

CHAPTER XXXII
THE ORDEAL BY STEEL

The women for the most part fell like sacks and slept where they alighted, dead weary. The men, when they had cared for the horses, followed the example; for Badelon would suffer no fire. In less than half an hour, a sentry who stood on guard at the edge of the wood, and Tignonville and La Tribe, who talked in low voices with their backs against a tree, were the only persons who remained awake, with the exception of the Countess. Carlat had made a couch for her, and screened it with cloaks from the wind and the eye; for the moon had risen, and where the trees stood sparsest its light flooded the soil with pools of white. But Madame had not yet retired to her bed. The two men, whose voices reached her, saw her from time to time moving restlessly to and fro between the road and the little encampment. Presently she came and stood over them.

"He led His people out of the wilderness," La Tribe was saying; "out of the trouble of Paris, out of the trouble of Angers, and always, always southward. If you do not in this, monsieur, see His finger-"

"And Angers?" Tignonville struck in, with a faint sneer. "Has He led that out of trouble? A day or two ago you would risk all to save it, my friend. Now, with your back safely turned on it, you think all for the best."

"We did our best," the minister answered humbly. "From the day we met in Paris we have been but instruments."

"To save Angers?"

"To save a remnant."

On a sudden the Countess raised her hand. "Do you not hear horses, monsieur?" she cried. She had been listening to the noises of the night, and had paid little heed to what the two were saying.

"One of ours moved," Tignonville answered listlessly. "Why do you not lie down, madame?"

Instead of answering, "Whither is he going?" she asked. "Do you know?"

"I wish I did know," the young man answered peevishly. "To Niort, it may be. Or presently he will double back and recross the Loire."

"He would have gone by Cholet to Niort," La Tribe said. "The direction is rather that of Rochelle. God grant we be bound thither!"

"Or to Vrillac," the Countess cried, clasping her hands in the darkness. "Can it be to Vrillac he is going?"

The minister shook his head.

"Ah, let it be to Vrillac!" she cried, a thrill in her voice. "We should be safe there. And he would be safe."

"Safe?" echoed a fourth and deeper voice. And out of the darkness beside them loomed a tall figure.

The minister looked and leapt to his feet. Tignonville rose more slowly.

The voice was Tavannes' "And where am I to be safe?" he repeated slowly, a faint ring of saturnine amusement in his tone.

"At Vrillac," she cried. "In my house, monsieur."

He was silent a moment. Then, "Your house, madame? In which direction is it, from here?"

"Westwards," she answered impulsively, her voice quivering with eagerness and emotion and hope. "Westwards, monsieur-on the sea. The causeway from the land is long, and ten can hold it against ten hundred."

"Westwards? And how far westwards?"

Tignonville answered for her; in his tone throbbed the same eagerness, the same anxiety, which spoke in hers. Nor was Count Hannibal's ear deaf to it. "Through Challans," he said, "thirteen leagues."

"From Clisson?"

"Yes, Monsieur le Comte."

"And by Commequiers less," the Countess cried.

"No, it is a worse road," Tignonville answered quickly; "and longer in time."

"But we came-"

"At our leisure, madame. The road is by Challans, if we wish to be there quickly."

"Ah!" Count Hannibal said. In the darkness it was impossible to see his face or mark how he took it. "But being there, I have few men."

"I have forty will come at call," she cried with pride. "A word to them, and in four hours or a little more-"

"They would outnumber mine by four to one," Count Hannibal answered coldly, drily, in a voice like ice-water flung in their faces. "Thank you, madame; I understand. To Vrillac is no long ride; but we will not ride it at present." And he turned sharply on his heel and strode from them.

He had not covered thirty paces before she overtook him in the middle of a broad patch of moonlight and touched his arm. He wheeled swiftly, his hand half-way to his hilt. Then he saw who it was. "Ah," he said, "I had forgotten, madame. You have come-"

"No!" she cried passionately; and standing before him she shook back the hood of her cloak that he might look into her eyes. "You owe me no blow to-day. You have paid me, monsieur. You have struck me already, and foully, like a coward. Do you remember," she continued rapidly, "the hour after our marriage, and what you said to me? Do you remember what you told me? And whom to trust and whom to suspect, where lay our interest and where our foes? You trusted me then! What have I done that you now dare-ay, dare, monsieur," she repeated fearlessly, her face pale and her eyes glittering with excitement, "to insult me? That you treat me as-Javette? That you deem me capable of that? Of luring you into a trap, and in my own house, or the house that was mine, of-"

"Treating me as I have treated others."

"You have said it!" she cried. She could not herself understand why his distrust had wounded her so sharply, so home, that all fear of him was gone. "You have said it, and put that between us which will not be removed. I could have forgiven blows," she continued, breathless in her excitement, "so you had thought me what I am. But now you will do well to watch me! You will do well to leave Vrillac on one side. For were you there, and raised your hand against me-not that that touches me, but it will do-and there are those, I tell you, would fling you from the tower at my word."

"Indeed?"

"Ay, indeed! And indeed, monsieur!"

Her face was in moonlight, his was in shadow.

"And this is your new tone, madame, is it?" he said, slowly and after a pregnant pause. "The crossing of a river has wrought so great a change in you?"

"No!" she cried.

"Yes," he said. And despite herself she flinched before the grimness of his tone. "You have yet to learn one thing, however: that I do not change. That, north or south, I am the same to those who are the same to me. That what I have won on the one bank I will hold on the other, in the teeth of all, and though God's Church be thundering on my heels! I go to Vrillac-"

"You-go?" she cried. "You go?"

"I go," he repeated, "to-morrow. And among your own people I will see what language you will hold. While you were in my power I spared you. Now that you are in your own land, now that you lift your hand against me, I will show you of what make I am. If blows will not tame you, I will try that will suit you less. Ay, you wince, madame! You had done well had you thought twice before you threatened, and thrice before you took in hand to scare Tavannes with a parcel of clowns and fisherfolk. Tomorrow, to Vrillac and your duty! And one word more, madame," he continued, turning back to her truculently when he had gone some paces from her. "If I find you plotting with your lover by the way I will hang not you, but him. I have spared him a score of times; but I know him, and I do not trust him."

"Nor me," she said, and with a white, set face she looked at him in the moonlight. "Had you not better hang me now?"

"Why?"

"Lest I do you an injury!" she cried with passion; and she raised her hand and pointed northward. "Lest I kill you some night, monsieur! I tell you, a thousand men on your heels are less dangerous than the woman at your side-if she hate you."

"Is it so?" he cried. His hand flew to his hilt; his dagger flashed out. But she did not move, did not flinch, only she set her teeth; and her eyes, fascinated by the steel, grew wider.

His hand sank slowly. He held the weapon to her, hilt foremost; she took it mechanically. "You think yourself brave enough to kill me, do you?" he sneered. "Then take this, and strike, if you dare. Take it-strike, madame! It is sharp, and my arms are open." And he flung them wide, standing within a pace of her. "Here, above the collar-bone, is the surest for a weak hand. What, afraid?" he continued, as, stiffly clutching the weapon which he had put into her hand, she glared at him, trembling and astonished. "Afraid, and a Vrillac! Afraid, and 'tis but one blow! See, my arms are open. One blow home, and you will never lie in them. Think of that. One blow home, and you may lie in his. Think of that! Strike, then, madame," he went on, piling taunt on taunt, "if you dare, and if you hate me. What, still afraid! How shall I give you heart? Shall I strike you? It will not be the first time by ten. I keep count, you see," he continued mockingly. "Or shall I kiss you? Ay, that may do. And it will not be against your will, either, for you have that in your hand will save you in an instant. Even" – he drew a foot nearer-"now! Even-" And he stooped until his lips almost touched hers.

She sprang back. "Oh, do not!" she cried. "Oh, do not!" And, dropping the dagger, she covered her face with her hands, and burst into weeping.

He stooped coolly, and, after groping some time for the poniard, drew it from the leaves among which it had fallen. He put it into the sheath, and not until he had done that did he speak. Then it was with a sneer. "I have no need to fear overmuch," he said. "You are a poor hater, madame. And poor haters make poor lovers. 'Tis his loss! If you will not strike a blow for him, there is but one thing left. Go, dream of him!"

And shrugging his shoulders contemptuously he turned on his heel.

CHAPTER XXXIII
THE AMBUSH

The start they made at daybreak was gloomy and ill-omened, through one of those white mists which are blown from the Atlantic over the flat lands of Western Poitou. The horses, looming gigantic through the fog, winced as the cold harness was girded on them. The men hurried to and fro with saddles on their heads, and stumbled over other saddles, and swore savagely. The women turned mutinous and would not rise; or, being dragged up by force, shrieked wild unfitting words, as they were driven to the horses. The Countess looked on and listened, and shuddered, waiting for Carlat to set her on her horse. She had gone during the last three weeks through much that was dreary, much that was hopeless; but the chill discomfort of this forced start, with tired horses and wailing women, would have darkened the prospect of home had there been no fear or threat to cloud it.

He whose will compelled all stood a little apart and watched all, silent and gloomy. When Badelon, after taking his orders and distributing some slices of black bread to be eaten in the saddle, moved off at the head of his troop, Count Hannibal remained behind, attended by Bigot and the eight riders who had formed the rearguard so far. He had not approached the Countess since rising, and she had been thankful for it. But now, as she moved away, she looked back and saw him still standing; she marked that he wore his corselet, and in one of those revulsions of feeling-which outrun man's reason-she who had tossed on her couch through half the night, in passionate revolt against the fate before her, took fire at his neglect and his silence; she resented on a sudden the distance he kept, and his scorn of her. Her breast heaved, her colour came, involuntarily she checked her horse, as if she would return to him, and speak to him. Then the Carlats and the others closed up behind her, Badelon's monotonous "Forward, madame, en avant!" proclaimed the day's journey begun, and she saw him no more.

Nevertheless, the motionless figure, looming Homeric through the fog, with gleams of wet light reflected from the steel about it, dwelt long in her mind. The road which Badelon followed, slowly at first, and with greater speed as the horses warmed to their work, and the women, sore and battered, resigned themselves to suffering, wound across a flat expanse broken by a few hills. These were little more than mounds, and for the most part were veiled from sight by the low-lying sea-mist, through which gnarled and stunted oaks rose mysterious, to fade as strangely. Weird trees they were, with branches unlike those of this world's trees, rising in a grey land without horizon or limit, through which our travellers moved, jaded phantoms in a clinging nightmare. At a walk, at a trot, more often at a weary jog, they pushed on behind Badelon's humped shoulders. Sometimes the fog hung so thick about them that they saw only those who rose and fell in the saddles immediately before them; sometimes the air cleared a little, the curtain rolled up a space, and for a minute or two they discerned stretches of unfertile fields, half-tilled and stony, or long tracts of gorse and broom, with here and there a thicket of dwarf shrubs or a wood of wind-swept pines. Some looked and saw these things; more rode on sulky and unseeing, supporting impatiently the toils of a flight from they knew not what.

To do Tignonville justice, he was not of these. On the contrary, he seemed to be in a better temper on this day; and, where so many took things unheroically, he showed to advantage. Avoiding the Countess and riding with Carlat, he talked and laughed with marked cheerfulness; nor did he ever fail, when the mist rose, to note this or that landmark, and confirm Badelon in the way he was going.

"We shall be at Lége by noon!" he cried more than once, "and if M. le Comte persists in his plan, may reach Vrillac by late sunset. By way of Challans!"

And always Carlat answered, "Ay, by Challans, monsieur, so be it!"

He proved, too, so far right in his prediction that noon saw them drag, a weary train, into the hamlet of Lége, where the road from Nantes to Olonne runs southward over the level of Poitou. An hour later Count Hannibal rode in with six of his eight men, and, after a few minutes' parley with Badelon, who was scanning the horses, he called Carlat to him. The old man came.

"Can we reach Vrillac to-night?" Count Hannibal asked curtly.

"By Challans, my lord," the steward answered, "I think we can. We call it seven hours' riding from here."

"And that route is the shortest?"

"In time, M. le Comte, the road being better."

Count Hannibal bent his brows. "And the other way?" he said.

"Is by Commequiers, my lord. It is shorter in distance."

"By how much!"

"Two leagues. But there are fordings and a salt marsh; and with Madame and the women-"

"It would be longer?"

The steward hesitated. "I think so," he said slowly, his eyes wandering to the grey misty landscape, against which the poor hovels of the village stood out naked and comfortless. A low thicket of oaks sheltered the place from southwesterly gales. On the other three sides it lay open.

"Very good," Tavannes said curtly. "Be ready to start in ten minutes. You will guide us."

But when the ten minutes had elapsed and the party were ready to start, to the astonishment of all the steward was not to be found. To peremptory calls for him no answer came; and a hurried search through the hamlet proved equally fruitless. The only person who had seen him since his interview with Tavannes turned out to be M. de Tignonville; and he had seen him mount his horse five minutes before, and move off-as he believed-by the Challans road.

"Ahead of us!"

"Yes, M. le Comte," Tignonville answered, shading his eyes and gazing in the direction of the fringe of trees. "I did not see him take the road, but he was beside the north end of the wood when I saw him last. Thereabouts!" and he pointed to a place where the Challans road wound round the flank of the wood. "When we are beyond that point, I think we shall see him."

Count Hannibal growled a word in his beard, and, turning in his saddle, looked back the way he had come. Half a mile away, two or three dots could be seen approaching across the plain. He turned again. "You know the road?" he said, curtly addressing the young man.

"Perfectly. As well as Carlat."

"Then lead the way, monsieur, with Badelon. And spare neither whip nor spur. There will be need of both, if we would lie warm to-night."

Tignonville nodded assent and, wheeling his horse, rode to the head of the party, a faint smile playing about his mouth. A moment, and the main body moved off behind him, leaving Count Hannibal and six men to cover the rear. The mist, which at noon had risen for an hour or two, was closing down again, and they had no sooner passed clear of the wood than the trees faded out of sight behind them. It was not wonderful that they could not see Carlat. Objects a hundred paces from them were completely hidden.

Trot, trot! Trot, trot! through a. grey world so featureless, so unreal that the riders, now dozing in the saddle, and now awaking, seemed to themselves to stand still, as in a nightmare. A trot and then a walk, and then a trot again; and all a dozen times repeated, while the women bumped along in their wretched saddles, and the horses stumbled, and the men swore at them.

Ha! La Garnache at last, and a sharp turn southward to Challans. The Countess raised her head, and began to look about her. There, should be a church, she knew; and there, the old ruined tower built by wizards, or the Carthaginians, so old tradition ran; and there, to the westward, the great salt marshes towards Noirmoutier. The mist hid all, but the knowledge that they were there set her heart beating, brought tears to her eyes, and lightened the long road to Challans.

At Challans they halted half-an-hour, and washed out the horses' mouths with water and a little guignolet-the spirit of the country. A dose of the cordial was administered to the women; and a little after seven they began the last stage of the journey, through a landscape which even the mist could not veil from the eyes of love. There rose the windmill of Soullans! There the old dolmen, beneath which the grey wolf that ate the two children of Tornic had its lair. For a mile back they had been treading my lady's land; they had only two more leagues to ride, and one of those was crumbling under each dogged footfall. The salt flavour, which is new life to the shore-born, was in the fleecy reek which floated by them, now thinner, now more opaque; and almost they could hear the dull thunder of the Biscay waves falling on the rocks.

Tignonville looked back at her and smiled. She caught the look; she fancied that she understood it and his thoughts. But her own eyes were moist at the moment with tears, and what his said, and what there was of strangeness in his glance, half-warning, half-exultant, escaped her. For there, not a mile before them, where the low hills about the fishing village began to rise from the dull inland level-hills green on the land side, bare and scarped towards the sea and the island-she espied the wayside chapel at which the nurse of her early childhood had told her beads. Where it stood, the road from Commequiers and the road she travelled became one: a short mile thence, after winding among the hillocks, it ran down to the beach and the causeway-and to her home.

At the sight she bethought herself of Carlat, and calling to M. de Tignonville she asked him what he thought of the steward's continued absence.

"He must have outpaced us!" he answered with an odd laugh.

"But he must have ridden hard to do that."

He reined back to her. "Say nothing!" he muttered under his breath. "But look ahead, madame, and see if we are expected!"

"Expected? How can we be expected?" she cried. The colour rushed into her face.

He put his finger to his lip, and looked warningly at Badelon's humped shoulders, jogging up and down in front of them. Then, stooping towards her, in a lower tone, "If Carlat has arrived before us, he will have told them," he said.

"Have told them!" she exclaimed.

"He came by the other road, and it is quicker."

She gazed at him in astonishment, her lips parted; and slowly she comprehended, and her eyes grew hard. "Then why," she said, "did you say it was longer? Had we been overtaken, monsieur, we had had you to thank for it, it seems!"

He bit his lip. "But we have not been overtaken," he rejoined. "On the contrary, you have me to thank for something quite different."

"As unwelcome, perhaps!" she retorted. "For what?"

"Softly, madame."

"For what?" she repeated, refusing to lower her voice. "Speak, monsieur, if you please." He had never seen her look at him in that way.

"For the fact," he answered, stung by her look and tone, "that when you arrive you will find yourself mistress in your own house! Is that nothing?"

"You have called in my people?"

"Carlat has done so, or should have," he answered. "Henceforth," he continued, a ring of exultation in his voice, "it will go hard with M. le Comte, if he does not treat you better than he has treated you hitherto. That is all!"

"You mean that it will go hard with him in any case?" she cried, her bosom rising and falling.

"I mean, madame- But there they are! Good Carlat! Brave Carlat! He has done well."

"Carlat?"

"Ay, there they are! And you are mistress in your own land! At last you are mistress, and you have me to thank for it! See!" And heedless in his exultation whether Badelon understood or not, he pointed to a place before them where the road wound between two low hills. Over the green shoulder of one of these, a dozen bright points caught and reflected the last evening light; while as he spoke a man rose to his feet on the hill-side above, and began to make signs to persons below. A pennon, too, showed an instant over the shoulder, fluttered, and was gone.

Badelon looked as they looked. The next instant he uttered a low oath, and dragged his horse across the front of the party. "Pierre!" he cried to the man on his left, "Ride for your life! To my lord, and tell him we are ambushed!" And as the trained soldier wheeled about and spurred away, the sacker of Rome turned a dark scowling face on Tignonville. "If this be your work," he hissed, "we shall thank you for it in hell! For it is where most of us will lie to-night! They are Montsoreau's spears, and they have those with them are worse to deal with than themselves!" Then in a different tone, and throwing off all disguise, "Men to the front!" he shouted. "And you, madame, to the rear quickly, and the women with you! Now, men, forward, and draw! Steady! Steady! They are coming!"

There was an instant of confusion, disorder, panic; horses jostling one another, women screaming and clutching at men, men shaking them off and forcing their way to the van. Fortunately the enemy did not fall on at once, as Badelon expected, but after showing themselves in the mouth of the valley, at a distance of three hundred paces, hung for some reason irresolute. This gave Badelon time to array his seven swords in front; but real resistance was out of the question, as he knew. And to none seemed less in question than to Tignonville.

When the truth, and what he had done, broke on the young man, he sat a moment motionless with horror. It was only when Badelon had twice summoned him with opprobrious words that he awoke to the relief of action. Even after that he hung an instant trying to meet the Countess's eyes, despair in his own; but it was not to be. She had turned her head, and was looking back, as if thence only and not from him could help come. It was not to him she turned; and he saw it, and the justice of it. And silent, grim, more formidable even than old Badelon, the veteran fighter, who knew all the tricks and shifts of the mêlée, he spurred to the flank of the line.