"That beldam!" he exclaimed, with a terrible oath, and then, "God help them!" he said--twice. And after a moment of silence, meeting my eyes and reading the horror in them, he laughed harshly. "After all, what matter?" he said recklessly. "We shall all go together! Let us go like gentlemen. I did what I could. Do you hear that?"
He held up his hand, as a roar of musketry shook the house; and he gave an order. The small windows had been stopped with paving stones, the door made solid with the wall behind it; and daylight being shut out, lamps had been lighted, which gave the long whitewashed, stone-groined room a strange sombre look. Or it was the grim faces I saw round me had that effect.
"I am afraid that the St. Alais are cut off in the Arènes," he said coolly. "And they are not enough to man the walls. Those cursed Cevennols have been too many for us. As for our friends--it is as I expected; they have left me to die like a bull in the ring. Well, we must die goring."
But in the midst of my admiration of his courage a kind of revulsion seized me. "And Denise?" I said, grasping his arm fiercely. "Are we to leave her to perish?"
He looked at me, his lip curling. "True," he said, with a sneering smile. "I forgot. You are not of us."
"I am thinking of her!" I cried, raging. And in that moment I hated him.
But his mood changed while he looked at me. "You are right, Monsieur," he said, in a different tone. "Go! There may be a chance; but the church is by the Capuchins, and those dogs were baying round it when we fell back. They are ten to one, or--still there may be a chance," he continued with decision. "Go, and if you find her, and escape, do not forget Froment of Nîmes."
"By the postern?" I said.
"Yes--take this," he answered; and abruptly drawing a pistol from his pocket, he forced it on me. "Go, and I must go too. Good fortune, Monsieur, and farewell. And you, bark away, you dogs!" he continued bitterly, addressing the unconscious mob. "The bull is on foot yet, and will toss some of you before the ring closes!"