He himself has been twice wounded; four of his young officers have been killed. The French musketeers, the finest the world has ever seen, work relentlessly upon his finest positions. And he feels—this great captain, who hitherto hath not known defeat—he feels that now at last he has met his match. Not a great leader like himself, perhaps, not the victorious general in an hundred fights; but a man whose stubbornness and daring, whose blind disregard of danger and sublime defiance of evil fortune, gives strength to the weakest and valour to the least bold.
'I thought you had rid me once of that pestilential rebel!' he exclaims to de Landas, pointing to where Gilles de Crohin's tall figure towers above the pressing mass of Spanish halberdiers.
De Landas murmurs an imprecation, crosses himself in an access of superstitious fear.
'My God!' he says under his breath. 'He hath risen from the dead!'
In truth, Gilles appears endowed at this hour with superhuman strength. His doublet and jerkin are torn, his breastplate riddled with arrow-shot, he bleeds profusely from the hand, his face is unrecognizable under a coating of smoke and grime. Enthusiasm and obstinacy have given him the power of giants; his hatred of the foe is supreme; his contempt of death sublime. De Landas sees in him the incarnation of his own retributive destiny. 'Oh, that God's thunder would smite him where he stands!' he mutters fervently.
''Tis too late now,' retorts Parma, with ferocious spite. 'Too late to call to God to help you. You should have bargained with the devil four months ago, when you missed your aim. Risen from the dead, forsooth!' he adds, purple with fury. 'Very much alive now, meseems, and with the strength of Satan in his arm.'
He strikes at de Landas with his sword, would have killed him with his own hand, so enraged is he with the man for his failure to murder an enemy whom he loathes and fears.
'Unless those cowards rally,' he calls savagely, and points to where, in the heart of the mêlée, confusion and disorder wield their grisly sceptres, 'we shall have to retreat.'
But de Landas does not stop to hear. The fear of the supernatural which had for the moment paralysed his thinking faculties, is soon merged in that boundless hatred which he feels for the rival whom he had thought dead long ago. In the heart of that confusion he has spied Gilles, fighting, pursuing; slashing, hitting—intrepid and superb, the centre and the life of the victorious army. De Landas sets spurs to his horse and, calling to his own troop of swordsmen to follow, dashes into the mêlée.
The battle now is at its fiercest. A proud army, superior in numbers, in arms, in knowledge, feels itself weakening before an enemy whose greatest power is his valour. The retreat has not yet sounded, but the Spanish captains all know that the humiliating end is in sight. Already their pikemen have thrown down their cumbersome weapons. Pursued by the French lancers, they turn and fight with hands and fists, some of them; whilst others scatter in every direction. The ranks of their archers are broken, and the fire of their musketeers has become intermittent and weak. Even the horsemen, the flower of Parma's army, gentlemen all, are breaking in the centre. With reins loose, stirrup-leathers flapping, swords cast away and mantles flying loose, they are making a stand which is obviously the last, and which within the next few minutes will with equal certainty turn into rout.