"Demons of hell," cried Cauvignac, "you are playing against me, but I believe, upon my soul, that you will lose again to-day. Ferguzon! Ferguzon! help!"
Two or three musket shots rang out in their rear, and were answered by a general discharge from in front.
The carriage came to a stand-still; two of the horses fell from exhaustion, and a third was struck by a bullet.
Ferguzon and his men fell upon the troops of Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld; as they outnumbered them three to one, the Bordelais soon found it hopeless to continue the struggle; they turned tail and fled, and victors and vanquished, pursuers and pursued, vanished in the darkness like a cloud driven by the wind.
Cauvignac remained with the footmen and Francinette beside the insensible Nanon. Luckily they were within a hundred yards of the village of Carbonblanc. Cauvignac carried Nanon in his arms as far as the first house; and there, having given orders to bring up the carriage, placed his sister upon a bed, and, taking from his breast an object which Francinette could not distinguish, slipped it into the poor woman's clenched hand.
The next morning, on awaking from what she thought at first was a frightful dream, Nanon put her hand to her face, and felt something soft and silky caress her pale cheeks. It was a lock of Canolles' hair which Cauvignac had heroically rescued, at the peril of his life, from the Bordelais tigers.
VI.
For eight days and nights Madame de Cambes lay tossing in delirium upon the bed to which she was carried, unconscious, upon learning the terrible news.
Her women took care of her, but Pompée kept the door; no other than the old servant, as he knelt beside his unhappy mistress's bed, could awake in her a glimmer of reason.