"Since you heard all, how can you be mad enough to ask me to love you?"
"I am not mad! One can pass from hatred to love, I know by my own experience. You abhor and adore at the same time. Besides, you admitted that I had fine eyes now, and slender arms, and a sort of diabolical beauty. That is what you said at the inn just now. And many of those gentlemen offered me the night before money to buy other silk skirts and other ear-rings, because, beautiful or ugly, I had turned their heads. But I want nothing from them and nothing from you! I still have money hidden in Berry, and I can go there when I choose. Beware, Mario! Your Lauriane will answer to me for you. Take me with you, or renounce her."
"As you confess your evil purposes so boldly, I arrest you," said Mario.
He tried to seize her, being determined to turn her over to the camp authorities; but he seized nothing but her scarf: the girl herself, fleeter and more unsubstantial than the clouds driven by the wind, eluded him and vanished. He pursued her and might have caught her, for he too knew how to run; but he had hardly turned the corner when the bugles sounded boots and saddles; it was the signal of departure for the long-expected battle.
Mario forgot the wild threats that had excited him and hastened to his father, who was hurriedly dressing.
At daybreak the whole army was on the march.
"The Pas de Suse is a gorge about a quarter of a league in length, in some places less than twenty paces wide, and obstructed here and there by fallen rocks. The tergiversation of the Prince of Piedmont had had no other purpose than to delay the advance of our army for a few days. The enemy had used the interval to good advantage in strengthening their position.
"The gorge was intersected by three strong barricades protected by bastions and ditches. The cliffs commanding it on each side were alive with soldiers, and protected by small redoubts.
"Lastly, the cannon of Fort Tallasse, built on a neighboring mountain, swept the open space between Chaumont and the entrance to the gorge. It was one of those positions where it seems possible for a handful of men to check the advance of an army.
"Nothing, however, could check the furie française."[10]