The women immediately withdrew from the window, and wheeled away the couch on which the Marquis was lying, but nothing would induce de Lescure to allow himself to be stirred; in fixed silence, with his head resting low on the window sill, he gazed on the crowded soldiers, as they poured thick and numerous into the town.

“Oh, where is Henri now?” said Madame de Lescure.  “What shall we do—­where are we to go?  Speak, Charles, for heaven’s sake, speak!”

Marie had opened the door, and now stood with it in her hands, wishing to run, and yet not choosing to leave her companions in misfortune; while Agatha vainly endeavoured with her unassisted strength to remove her father from the room.

“Henri is just where he ought to be,” said de Lescure.  “There—­there—­now they come—­now they come.  By heavens, there’s Denot leading—­and see, there’s de Bauge and Arthur—­dear boy, gallant boy.  Well done, Henri Larochejaquelin:  had you been grey it could not have been better done; he has got the blues as it were into a wine-press; poor devils, not one can escape alive.”

De Lescure, when he first saw the republicans coming down the street, had for a moment thought that the town was in their hands; but a minute’s reflection served to show him, that were such really the case, they would have driven before them hundreds of the retreating Vendeans.  The peasants had never yet so utterly forgotten their courage, as to throw down their weapons at the first sight of their enemy, and fly without making an effort for victory, and de Lescure was sure that such could not now have been the case.  It immediately occurred to him, that the passage of the gate must have been purposely left free to the devoted blues, and that Henri and his men would fail upon them in the town, where their discipline and superior arms, would be but of comparatively little use to them.

He was right; for while the women were yet trembling, panic-struck at the first sight of their enemies, Henri and his party had entered the long street from the market-place, and with a fierce yell of defiance, the Vendean cavalry rushed upon the astonished blues, meeting them almost beneath the very window from which de Lescure was looking.

The three women crouched round the aged Marquis in the farthest corner of the room, comforted to find that he whom they so trusted still expected victory; but nearly fainting with fear, and deafened with the sounds of the conflict.  To de Lescure the sight was pleasure itself; as he could not be in the fight, the next thing was to see the combatants and cheer his friends.  The foremost of the republican soldiers soon gave way beneath the weight of the attack; though they fought sturdily, and did their best to keep their ground.  They could not, however, retreat far; their own men still advancing behind blocked up the way; and after a while, that which De Lescure had predicted took place:  another party of Vendeans had attacked them in the rear, and occupied the only gate through which they could leave the city.