"Pray what do you want?"
"Kill us to the last man, or let us all go."
"You are exacting, gentlemen," said the commodore; "but one can refuse nothing to such men as you. But you will permit me to furnish you with an escort of Englishmen as far as the gate? Otherwise none of you will reach it alive. Is that agreed?"
"Yes, my lord," replied Roland; "and we can only thank you for your courtesy."
Sidney Smith left two English officers to guard the door, entered the mosque himself, and held out his hand to Roland. Ten minutes later the English escort arrived.
The French soldiers with fixed bayonets, and the English officers with drawn swords, traversed the street which led to the French camp, amid the imprecations of the Mussulmans, the howling of the women, and the cries of the children. The ten or twelve wounded, among them Faraud, were carried on improvised litters of gun-barrels. The Goddess of Reason walked beside the sub-lieutenant's litter, pistol in hand. Smith and his English soldiers accompanied the grenadiers until they were out of range of the Turkish guns, and as they defiled before the redcoats the latter presented arms.
Bonaparte, as we have said, had retired within his tent. He called for Plutarch, and read the biography of Augustus; then, thinking of Roland and his gallant companions, who were probably being murdered, he muttered, like Augustus after the battle of Teutberg: "Varus, give me back my legions!"
But he had no one of whom he could demand his legions, for he had been his own Varus.
Suddenly he heard a great uproar and the strains of the "Marseillaise" reached his ears. Why did these soldiers rejoice and sing when their general was weeping with rage?
He sprang to the door of his tent. The first persons he saw were Roland, his aide-de-camp Raimbaud, and Faraud.