if you had heard the groan, the long wail of grief, which his poor followers from St. Florent uttered, when they saw their sainted leader fall before them, your ears would never forget the sound.  We raised him up between us, and carried him back to a part of the town which was in our hands, and from thence over the Pont Rousseau to Pirmil, where I left him for a while, and returned to the town, but I could not get the peasants to follow me again—­that is, his peasants; and he was too weak to speak to them himself.  It was not till two hours after that he was able to speak a word.”

“And you lost all the advantage you had gained?” asked de Lescure.

“We might still have been successful, for the blues would always rather run than fight when they have the choice, but the Prince de Talmont, in his eagerness, headed the fugitive rebels who were making for Savenay, and drove them back into the town; when there, they had no choice but to fight; indeed, their numbers were so much greater than our own, that they surrounded us.  Our hearts were nearly broken, and our arms were weak; it ended in our retreating to Pirmil, and leaving the town in the hands of the republicans.”

“How truly spoke that General who said, ’build a bridge of gold for a flying enemy!’” said de Lescure.

“And is Cathelineau’s wound so surely mortal?” asked Henri.

“The surgeon who examined him in Pirmil said so; indeed, Cathelineau never doubted it himself.  He told me, as soon as he could speak, that he should never live to see the Republic at an end.  ‘But,’ added he, ’you, Foret, and others will; and it delights me to think that I have given my life to so good a cause.’”

Henri’s horse was now ready, and he made no longer delay than to say adieu to his hostess, and to speak one or two last words to his cousin Marie, and then he made the best of his way to Chatillon and St. Laurent, hoping once more to see Cathelineau before he died.  All his spurring and his hurrying was in vain.

A few hours before Henri could reach the hospital, the Saint of Anjou had breathed his last, and Agatha Larochejaquelin had soothed his dying moments.

As Foret had related, Agatha, on hearing of Cathelineau’s wound, had turned deadly pale.  It was not love that made her feel that the world was darkened by his fall; that from henceforward nothing to her could be bright and cheerful; at least not such love as that which usually warms a woman’s heart, for Agatha had never hoped, or even wished to be more to Cathelineau than an admiring friend; nor yet was it grief for the loss of services which she knew were invaluable to the cause she had so warmly espoused.  These two feelings were blended together in her breast.  She had taught herself to look to Cathelineau as the future saviour of her country; she loved his virtue, his patriotism, and his valour; and her heart was capable of no other love while that existed in it so strongly.  The idea of looking on Cathelineau