He went every evening to see what had been done during the day, and he was buried there during the battle, making his daily inspection, taking measurements, without the slightest suspicion of the tumult that reigned out-of-doors.
When he emerged from his hole, the entrance to which was under the staircase in the turret, he was like a drunken man for some moments and believed that he was dreaming; but, being a man of expedients, he speedily recovered his presence of mind.
He arrived just at the moment when the besieged fell back into the courtyard and the enemy were on the point of forcing their way in as well, everyone having lost his head.
Active and always well shod, like the true homme de chambre that he was, he gave but one bound to the tower of the huisset and dropped the portcullis in the face of the assailants, and, in fact, on the backs of some of them, so that the base of that instrument of exclusion did not reach the ground. He discovered it in time.
"Clindor!" he shouted to the bewildered page, who was preparing to close the gates behind the portcullis, "stay, stay! What's the reason that the portcullis doesn't fall? I still have a foot of it above the groove."
Clindor, who was not very brave, although he did his utmost to be, looked and recoiled in horror.
"I should think so," he said, "there are three men under it!"
"Numes célestes! our men! Look, I say, you triple sucking calf!"
"No, no, theirs."
"So much the better, by Mercury! Come here, quickly, some of you! Get on top of the portcullis! Bear down! bear down! Don't you see that those dead bodies will enable the living to crawl under the iron teeth, and that, when they are once under the archway, they will set fire to our gates! Down, down, you fellows! Break the heads of anyone who tries to pass, with hammers or feet or musket-butts. Mow them down with your scythe, living and dead, good Andoche! And you, Châtaignier, have you another charge? Have at that red-nose protruding there! So! bravo! by the god Teutates, that is well! right in the mouth! That makes one less of them!"