To what purpose, indeed! Aymar tried to loosen the bleeding fingers. De Soulanges clasped his boot.
"You will only get yourself captured, La Rocheterie," he sobbed, "and what good will that do?"
Captured! That was the last thing Aymar intended—and by Colonel Richard, too. . . . The fugitives, hearing the altercation, were pressing closely round his horse now, supplicating like children that he should not abandon them. And he saw Magloire's face of black amazement as he turned suddenly round and heard.
Well, he could always do it later on by his own hand. Aymar made a supreme effort, and, rallying all his faculties, began to issue orders as quickly and clearly as if, in the last few minutes, the whole of life had not gone sliding down to ruin.
And somehow he got them back, straggling and disheartened remnant that they were—ninety odd out of five hundred men—to their old quarters in the Bois des Fauvettes, where for the present they would be safe, and where (almost more important still) they felt that they were safe. And there they lifted him, stiff and spent, from his horse—L'Oiseleur, who had heard of the ambush and had nearly killed himself in riding to warn them of it, L'Oiseleur, who was so terribly distressed at what had befallen their comrades, but who, at least, was with them again. Could they do too much for him?
Their simple care for him was the final sword-thrust; and when, having dragged himself into the deserted little woodcutter's hut which was his own old headquarters, it became apparent that his right arm and shoulder were by this time temporarily useless from his fall, and Clément de Soulanges, wounded as he was himself, had insisted on rubbing them for him, it had been all Aymar could do to refrain from putting one of his pistols into the boy's hand and saying, "If you want to do something for me, use that!"
But soon he was too utterly exhausted for remorse or horror or any other emotion to play on him longer. He threw himself down on his couch of bracken and sleep descended like a pall. The long day was over.
(6)
But there was a waking—only too early. And by five o'clock next morning, when Aymar, very drawn but composed, was giving orders to young de Soulanges, he had already lived through years of torment. He was despatching Clément to warn du Tremblay of the disaster, and to tell him that in consequence he must not count on the support of the "Eperviers." And he had further ordered Clément—much to the latter's dismay—not to return to him, but to remain with du Tremblay.
"For I shall probably have to disband this remnant before you can get back," he said. "You see that, Clément, don't you?"