"Courage, my boy! Strike hard, and kill as many of the enemy as you can! Prove yourself worthy of the house of Neroweg!"
Almost immediately thereupon I saw the Count rise in his stirrups. His sword was on the point of striking my father when the latter crushed the shoulder of Neroweg with a pistol shot fired at close range. The Count dropped his sword and uttered a piercing cry. His son raised his light arquebus and took aim at my father, just then engaged in replacing his pistol in its holster. Instantly, driven by two digs of my spurs, my horse bounded forward, striking the steed of Odet of Plouernel breast against breast; at the very moment that Odet discharged his arquebus upon my father, I struck the lad so furious a blow with my saber that his casque and skull were cleaved in two. Odet stretched out his arms, and dropped backward bleeding upon the crupper of his horse. In the meantime, my own steed, wounded in the loins by a severe cut, collapsed. In falling, the heavy animal rolled over me, pressing with its full weight upon my wounded thigh. Pain deprived me of the strength to extricate myself. Several combatants trampled me under foot. My corselet was torn open under the iron hoofs of the horses. My morion was knocked in and flattened; pressed by its walls my skull felt as if cramped by a vise. My eyes began to swim; I was about to faint, but a frightful vision so stirred my soul at that moment that I seemed to revive. The melee left in its wake upon the field of carnage the dead, the dying, and the wounded among whom I lay. The spectacle I saw took place not far from my right. A few paces from me, my father, unhorsed by the arquebus of young Odet of Plouernel, raised himself livid, and sank again in a sitting posture, carrying his hands to his cuirass which a bullet had perforated. That same instant the diabolical cry smote my ears:
"Kill all! Kill all!"
And then, in the midst of the roll of thunder overhead, and across the surrounding sheen of lightning flashes, there appeared before my eyes—Fra Hervé, mounted upon a small black horse with long flowing mane, clad in his brown frock rolled up to his knees, and exposing his fleshless legs, naked like his feet which were strapped in spurred sandals wherewith he kicked his horse's flank and urged it onward. A fresh bandage covered his recent wound and girded his hairless skull. His hollow eyes sparkled with savage fury. Armed with a long cutlass that dripped blood he continued to cry:
"Kill all! Kill all!"
The monk led to carnage a band of gallows-birds, the scum and refuse of the Catholic army, whose duty it was to despatch the wounded with iron maces, axes and knives. Hervé recognized his brother Odelin, who, with one hand upon his wound and the other on the ground, was essaying to rise to his feet. An expression of satanic hatred lighted the face of the Cordelier. He jumped down from his horse, and emitted a roar of ferocious triumph. My father gave himself up for lost. Nevertheless he made an attempt to soften the heart of his executioner, saying:
"Hervé, brother! I have a wife and children. Last night I saved your life!"
"Lord!" cried the priest, gasping for breath and raising his fiery eyes and blood-stained cutlass to the thundering and lightning-lighted heaven above. "God of Vengeance! God of the Catholics! Receive as a holocaust the blood of Cain!"
And Fra Hervé precipitated himself upon his brother, threw him down, squatted upon his chest, seized his hair with one hand and with the other brandished the cutlass. Odelin uttered a cry of horror, closed his eyes and offered his throat. The fratricide was accomplished. Fra Hervé rose bespattered with his brother's blood, kicked the corpse with his foot, and jumped back upon his horse yelling:
"Kill all! Slaughter all the wounded!"