light horse pressed
between these two forces, ten times their superior in numbers.

"Sound the charge!" cried Louis XIII; "or my old Coislin is lost."

And he descended the hill, with all his suite as ardent as himself; but
before he reached the plain and was at the head of his musketeers, the
two companies had taken their course, dashing off with the rapidity of
lightning, and to the cry of "Vive le Roi!" They fell upon the long
column of the enemy's cavalry like two vultures upon a serpent; and,
making a large and bloody gap, they passed beyond, and rallied behind the
Spanish bastion, leaving the enemy's cavalry so astonished that they
thought only of re-forming their own ranks, and not of pursuing.

The French army uttered a burst of applause; the King paused in
amazement. He looked around him, and saw a burning desire for attack in
all eyes; the valor of his race shone in his own. He paused yet another
instant in suspense, listening, intoxicated, to the roar of the cannon,
inhaling the odor of the powder; he seemed to receive another life, and
to become once more a Bourbon. All-who looked on him felt as if they were
commanded by another man, when, raising his sword and his eyes toward the
sun, he cried:

"Follow me, brave friends! here I am King of France!"

His cavalry, deploying, dashed off with an ardor which devoured space,
and, raising billows of dust from the ground, which trembled beneath
them, they were in an instant mingled with the Spanish cavalry, and both
were swallowed up in an immense and fluctuating cloud.

"Now! now!" cried the Cardinal, in a voice of thunder, from his
elevation, "now remove the guns from their useless position! Fabert, give
your orders; let them be all directed upon the infantry which slowly
approaches to surround the King. Haste! save the King!"

Immediately the Cardinal's suite, until then sitting erect as so many
statues, were in motion. The generals gave their orders; the
aides-de-camp galloped off into the plain, where, leaping over the
ditches, barriers, and palisades, they arrived at their destination as
soon as the thought that directed them and the glance that followed them.

Suddenly the few and interrupted flashes which had shone from the
discouraged batteries became a continual and immense flame, leaving no
room for the smoke, which rose to the sky in an infinite number of light
and floating wreaths; the volleys of cannon, which had seemed like far
and feeble ec