Petit-Pierre was ready to tear her hair with anger, and urgently demanded explanations, which Gaspard did not give her until he had ordered a halt.
"We are now surrounded by five or six thousand men," he said, "and we ourselves are scarcely six hundred. The honor of the flag is safe, and that is all we can hope for."
"Are you certain of that?" asked Petit-Pierre.
"Look for yourself," he replied, taking her to a rise in the ground from which could be seen, converging on all sides toward the village of Chêne, dark masses topped with bayonets which sparkled in the rays of the setting sun. There, too, they heard the sound of drums and bugles approaching from all the points of the horizon.
"You see," continued Gaspard, "that in less than an hour we shall be completely surrounded, and no resource will then remain to these brave men--who, like myself, cannot away with Louis Philippe's prisons--but to get themselves killed upon the spot."
Petit-Pierre stood for some moments in gloomy silence; then, convinced of the truth of what the Vendéan leader told her, beholding the destruction of the hopes which a few moments earlier had seemed to her ardent mind so strong and dauntless, she felt her courage desert her, and she became, what she really was, a woman; she, who had so lately braved fire and sword with the nerve of a hero, sat down by the wayside and wept, disdaining to conceal the tears which furrowed her cheeks.
[XVII.]
AFTER THE FIGHT.
Gaspard, having rejoined his companions, thanked them for their services, told them of the state of things, and dismissed them for better times,--advising them to disperse at once, and thus escape all pursuit by the soldiers. Then he returned to Petit-Pierre, whom he found in the same place, and around her the Marquis de Souday, Bertha, and a few Vendéans who would not think of their own safety till certain of hers.
"Well," asked Petit-Pierre when Gaspard returned to her alone, "have they gone?"