"Were you, then, present at that combat, sir?" I asked.
"Yea," he replied; "I was at that time with Lesdiguières, the Protestant general, whom I had known at La Rochelle, and beshrew me if a more valiant soldier doth live, or a worthier soul in a stalwart frame. I was standing by his side when Tourves the butcher came for to urge him, with his three hundred men, to ride over the field and slay the wounded papists. 'No, sir,' quoth the general, 'I fight men, but hunt them not down.' The dead were heaped many feet thick on the plain, and the horses of the Huguenots waded to their haunches in blood. Those of the Religion were mad at the death of the Baron of Allemagne, the general of their southern churches, brave castellane, who, when the fight was done, took off his helmet for to cool his burning forehead; and lo, a shot sent him straight into eternity."
"The Catholics were then wholly routed?" I asked.
"Yea," he answered; "mowed down like grass in the hay-harvest. De Vins, however, escaped. He thought to have had a cheap victory over those of the Religion; but the saints in heaven, to whom he trusted, never told him that Lesdiguières on the one side and d'Allemagne on the other were hastening to the rescue, nor that his Italian horsemen should fail him in his need. So, albeit the papists fought like devils, as they are, his pride got a fall, which well-nigh killed him. He was riding frantically back into the fray for to get himself slain, when St. Cannat seized his bridle, and called him a coward, so I have heard, to dare for to die when his scattered troops had need of him; and so carried him off the field. D'Oraison, Janson, Pontmez, hotly pursued them, but in vain; and all the Protestant leaders, except Lesdiguières, returned that night to the castle of Allemagne for to bury the baron."
A sort of shiver passed through the young gentleman's frame as he uttered these last words.
"A sad burial you then witnessed?" I said.
"I pray God," he answered, "never to witness another such."
"What was the horror of it?" I asked.
"Would you hear it?" he inquired.
"Yea," I said, "most willingly; for methinks I see what you describe."