“Again the cannon from Cahors were fired, and the balls tore through a file of infantry near the king....
“‘Oh!’ cried M. de Turenne, ‘the siege of the city is over, Vezin.’ And as he spoke he fired at him and wounded him in the arm....
“‘You are wrong, Turenne,’ cried M. de Vezin; ‘there are twenty sieges in Cahors; so, if one is over, there are nineteen to come.’
“M. de Vezin defended himself during five days and nights from street to street and from house to house. Luckily for the rising fortunes of Henri of Navarre, he had counted too much on the walls and garrison of Cahors, and had neglected to send to M. de Biron....
“During these five days and nights, Henri commanded like a captain and fought like a soldier, slept with his head on a stone, and awoke sword in hand. Each day they conquered a street or a square, which each night the garrison tried to retake. On the fourth night the enemy seemed willing to give some rest to the Protestant army. Then it was Henri who attacked in his turn. He forced an intrenched position, but it cost him seven hundred men. M. de Turenne and nearly all the officers were wounded, but the king remained untouched.”
The Pyrenean city of Pau is more than once referred to by Dumas in the Valois romances, as was but natural, considering that its ancient château was the berceau of that Prince of Béarn who later married the intriguing Marguerite, and became ultimately Henri IV.
This fine old structure—almost the only really splendid historical monument of the city—had for long been the residence of the Kings of Navarre; was rebuilt in the fourteenth century by the brilliant Gaston Phœbus; and enlarged and luxuriously embellished by the beautiful Marguerite herself in the sixteenth century, after she had become la femme de Henri d’Albert, as her spouse was then known.
As might be expected, Dumas was exceedingly familiar with the suburban topography of Paris, and made frequent use of it in his novels.
It is in “The Count of Monte Cristo,” however, that this intimacy is best shown; possibly for the reason that therein he dealt with times less remote than those of the court romances of the “Valois” and the “Capets.”