and reserving the one essential point till the last, "that the army of
Conde shall be allowed free passage into the city."

The officials, headed by the Marechal de l'Hopital, at once exhibited the
most extreme courtesy of demeanor, and begged leave to assure her Highness
that under no conceivable circumstances could this request be granted.

She let loose upon them all the royal anger of the House of Bourbon. She
remembered the sights she had just seen; she thought of Rochefoucauld,
with his eye shot out and his white garments stained with blood,--of
Guitant shot through the body,--of Roche-Giffard, whom she pitied, "though
a Protestant." Conde might, at that moment, be sharing their fate; all
depended on her; and so Conrart declares, in his Memoirs, that
"Mademoiselle said some strange things to these gentlemen": as, for
instance, that her attendants should throw them out of the window; that
she would pluck off the Marshal's beard; that he should die by no hand but
her's, and the like. When it came to this, the Marechal de l'Hopital
stroked his chin with a sense of insecurity, and called the council away
to deliberate; "during which time," says the softened Princess, "leaning
on a window which looked on the St. Esprit, where they were saying mass, I
offered up my prayers to God." At last they came back, and assented to
every one of her propositions.

In a moment she was in the streets again. The first person she met was
Vallon, terribly wounded. "We are lost!" he said. "You are saved!" she
cried, proudly. "I command to-day in Paris, as I commanded in Orleans."
"Vous me rendez la vie," said the reanimated soldier, who had been with
her in her first campaign. On she went, meeting at every step men wounded
in the head, in the body, in the limbs,--on horseback, on foot, on planks,
on barrows,--besides the bodies of the slain. She reached the windows
beside the Porte St. Antoine, and Conde met her there; he rode up, covered
with blood and dust, his scabbard lost, his sword in hand. Before she
could speak, that soul of fire uttered, for the only recorded time in his
career, the word _Despair_: "Ma cousine, vous voyez un homme au
desespoir,"--and burst into tears. But her news instantly revived him, and
his army with him. "Mademoiselle is at the gate," the soldiers cried; and,
with this certainty of a place of refuge, they could do all things. In
this famous fight, five thousand men defended themselves against twelve
thousa