down the houses in its vicinity.  This oversight was immediately repaired, and a stout wall, the height of a man, made out of the ruins.  “If they send us peas,” said Guise, “we will give them back beans” ("we will give them at least as good as they bring “).  On the 26th of November the old wall was battered by a formidable artillery; and, breached in three places, it crumbled down on the 28th into the ditch, “at the same time making it difficult to climb for to come to the assault.”  The assailants uttered shouts of joy; but, when the cloud of dust had cleared off, they saw a fresh rampart eight feet in height above the breach, “and they experienced as much and even more disgust than they had felt pleasure at seeing the wall tumble.”  The besieged heaped mockery and insult upon them; but Guise “imperatively put a stop to the disturbance, fearing, it is said, lest some traitor should take advantage of it to give the assailants some advice, and the soldiers then conceived the idea of sticking upon the points of their pikes live cats, the cries of which seemed to show derision of the enemy.”

The siege went on for a month longer without making any more impression; and the imperial troops kicked against any fresh assaults.  “I was wont once upon a time to be followed to battle,” Charles V. would say, “but I see that I have no longer men about me; I must bid farewell to the empire, and go and shut myself up in some monastery; before three years are over I shall turn Cordelier.”  Whilst Metz was still holding out, the fortress of Toul was summoned by the Imperialists to open its gates; but the commandant replied, “When the town of Metz has been taken, when I have had the honor of being besieged in due form by the emperor, and when I have made as long a defence as the Duke of Guise has, such a summons may be addressed to me, and I will consider what I am to do.”  On the 26th of December, 1552, the sixty-fifth day since the arrival of the imperial army and the forty-fifth since the batteries had opened fire, Charles V. resolved to raise the siege.  “I see very well,” said he, “that fortune resembles women; she prefers a young king to an old emperor.”  His army filed off by night, in silence, leaving behind its munitions and its tents just as they stood, “driven away, almost, by the chastisement of Heaven,” says the contemporary chronicler Rabutin, “with but two shots by way of signal.”  The ditty of the soldier just quoted ends thus:—­

“At last, so stout was her defence,
From Metz they moved their guns away;
And, with the laugh at their expense,
A-tramping went their whole array. 
And at their tail the noble Lord
Of Guise sent forth a goodly throng
Of cavalry, with lance and sword,
To teach them how to tramp along.”

Guise was far from expecting so sudden and decisive a result.  “Sing me no more flattering strains in your letters about the emperor’s dislodgment hence,” he wrote on the 24th of December to his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine; “take it for certain that unless we be very much mistaken in him, he will not, as long as he has life, brook the shame of departing hence until he has seen it all out.”