The soldiers and officers wished to imitate their chief, and spread themselves about the village, but found with a surprise mingled with terror that every house was deserted and empty.

M. de St. Aignan, who had aided them in their search, now called to the officers: 

“March on, gentlemen.”

“But we are tired and dying with hunger, colonel.”

“Yes, but you are alive; and if you remain here another hour you will be dead.  Perhaps it is already too late.”

M. de St. Aignan knew nothing; but he suspected some great danger.  They went on; but two or three thousand men straggled from the main body, or, worn out with fatigue, lay down on the grass, or at the foot of a tree, wearied, desolate, and despairing.  Scarcely three thousand able men remained to the Duc d’Anjou.

CHAPTER LXVI.

The travelers.

While these disasters, the forerunners of a still greater one, were taking place, two travelers, mounted on excellent horses, left Brussels on a fine night, and rode toward Mechlin.  They rode side by side, without any apparent arms but a large Flemish knife, of which the handle appeared in the belt of one of them.  They rode on, each occupied with thoughts perhaps the same, without speaking a word.  They looked like those commercial travelers who at that time carried on an extensive trade between France and Flanders.  Whoever had met them trotting so peaceably along the road would have taken them for honest men, anxious to find a bed after their day’s work.  However, it was only necessary to overhear a few sentences of their conversation to lose any such opinion suggested by their appearance.  They were about half a league from Brussels, when the tallest of them said: 

“Madame, you were quite right to set off to-night; we shall gain seven leagues by it, and shall probably arrive at Mechlin by the time the result of the attack on Antwerp is known.  In two days of short marches, and you must take easy stages, we shall reach Antwerp.”

The person who was called madame, in spite of her male costume, replied in a voice calm, grave, and sweet: 

“My friend, believe me, God will tire of protecting this wicked prince, and will strike him cruelly; let us hasten to put our projects into execution, for I am not one of those who believe in fatality, and I think that men have perfect freedom in will and deed.  If we leave his punishment to God, and do not act ourselves, it was not worth while living so unhappily until now.”

At this moment a blast of north wind, cold and biting, swept across the plain.

“You shiver, madame,” said the other traveler; “take your cloak.”

“No, thank you, Remy; I no longer feel pain of body or mind.”

Remy rode on silently, only now and then stopping and looking back.

“You see no one behind us?” asked she, after one of these halts.