Cambray's walls are falling. The breach becomes wider and wider every hour, like a huge gaping wound through which the life-blood of the stricken city is oozing out drop by drop.
But, guarding that breach, not yet yielding one foot of the city which shelters his Jacqueline, Gilles de Crohin, with that handful of men, still holds the ground. His anxious eyes scan the low horizon far away where the April sun is slowly sinking to rest. That way lies La Fère and de Balagny's few picked men, whom Jehan has gone to fetch, and who could even in this desperate hour turn Spanish discomfiture into a rout.
'My God! why does Jehan tarry?' he calls out with smouldering impatience.
Up on the battlements the guard stand firm; but the Spaniards have succeeded in throwing several bridges of pikes across the moat and one mine after another is laid against the walls. Captains and officers run to Gilles for instructions or orders.
'There are no orders,' he says, 'save to hold out until France comes to your aid.'
And out in the open country, outside those city walls which hold together so much heroism and such indomitable courage, the Duke of Parma, angered, fierce, terrible, has rallied the cream of his armies around him. The sixth assault has just been repulsed, the breach cleared by a terrific fusillade from that handful of men, whilst a murderous shower from above, of granite and scrap-iron and heavy stones, has scattered the attacking party. A fragment of stone has hit the Duke on the forehead; blood is streaming down his face. He sets spurs to his horse and gallops to where a company of archers is scrambling helter-skelter out of the moat.
'Cowards!' he cries savagely. 'Will you flee before such rabble?'
He strikes at the soldiers with his sword, sets spurs to his horse until the poor beast snorts with pain, rears and paws the air with its hoofs, only to bring them down the next moment, trampling and kicking half a dozen soldiers to death in its mad and terrified struggle.
'You know the guard has fled,' Alexander Farnese cries to his officers. ''Tis only an undisciplined mob who is in there now.'
His nephew, Don Miguel de Salvado, a brave and experienced captain, shrugs his shoulders and retorts: