"O wretches! wretches!" she cried, as she fell to the bottom of the sledge, still holding, however, the reins in both hands.
Doctor Lorquin, too, had fallen upon the sledge. Frantz and the others, surrounded by twenty Cossacks, could render no assistance. Louise felt a hand grasp her shoulder—the hand of the fool, mounted on his tall steed.
At this supreme moment, the poor girl, crazed with fear, uttered a shriek of distress; then she saw something flash in the darkness; it was the barrels of Lorquin's pistols, and, quick as lightning, she had torn them from the doctor's belt. Both flashed at once, burning Yegof's beard, and sending their bullets crashing through the skull of a Cossack who was bending toward her. She seized Catherine's whip, and standing erect, pale as a corpse, struck the horse's flanks with all her might. The animal bounded from the blow, and the sledge dashed through the bushes; it bent to the right—to the left; then there was a shock; Catherine, Louise, sledge and straw, rolled clown the steep road-side in the snow. The horse stopped short, flung back on his haunches and his mouth full of bloody foam. He had struck against an oak. Swift as was their fall, Louise had seen some shadows pass like the wind behind the copse. She heard a terrible voice—the voice of Dives—shout,
"Forward! Point! point!"
It seemed but an illusion—a mingled vision, such as at our latest hour passes before our glazing eyes; but as she rose, the poor girl doubted it not; sabres were clashing twenty paces from her, behind a curtain of trees, and Marc's voice still rang on the night:
"Bravely, boys, bravely! No quarter!"
Then she saw a dozen Cossacks climbing the slope opposite, in the midst of the bushes, like hares, and through an opening beneath, Yegof flying across the valley, in the clear moonlight like a frightened bird. Several shots resounded, but they did not reach the fool; and standing erect in his stirrups while his horse kept on at his utmost speed, he turned in the saddle, shook his lance defiantly, and shouted a "Hurrah!" in a voice like that of a heron escaping the eagle's talons. Two more shots flashed from the forester's lodge; a rag flew from the fool's waist, but he still held on his course, again and again hoarsely shouting his "Hurrah!" as he followed the path his comrades had taken.
And then the vision vanished.
When Louise again became conscious, Catherine was standing beside her. They gazed for a moment at each other, and then embraced in an ecstasy of joy.
"Saved! saved!" murmured Catherine, and they wept in each other's arms.