ly
wild.

But the Marquis de Courtornieu's coolness restored the duke's
_sang-froid_.

He ran to the barracks, and in less than half an hour five hundred
foot-soldiers and three hundred of the Montaignac chasseurs were under
arms.

With these forces at his disposal it would have been easy enough
to suppress this movement without the least bloodshed. It was only
necessary to close the gates of the city. It was not with fowling-pieces
and clubs that these poor peasants could force an entrance into a
fortified town.

But such moderation did not suit a man of the duke's violent
temperament, a man who was ever longing for struggle and excitement, a
man whose ambition prompted him to display his zeal.

He had ordered the gate of the citadel to be left open, and had
concealed some of his soldiers behind the parapets of the outer
fortifications.

He then stationed himself where he could command a view of the approach
to the citadel, and deliberately chose his moment for giving the signal
to fire.

Still, a strange thing happened. Of four hundred shots, fired into a
dense crowd of fifteen hundred men, only three had hit the mark.

More humane than their chief, nearly all the soldiers had fired in the
air.

But the duke had not time to investigate this strange occurrence now.
He leaped into the saddle, and placing himself at the head of about
five hundred men, cavalry and infantry, he started in pursuit of the
fugitives.

The peasants had the advantage of their pursuers by about twenty
minutes.

Poor simple creatures!

They might easily have made their escape. They had only to disperse,
to scatter; but, unfortunately, the thought never once occurred to the
majority of them. A few ran across the fields and gained their homes
in safety; the others, frantic and despairing, overcome by the strange
vertigo that seizes the bravest in moments of panic, fled like a flock
of frightened sheep.

Fear lent them wings, for did they not hear each moment shots fired at
the laggards?

But there was one man, who, at each of these detonations, received, as
it were, his death-wound--this man was Lacheneur.

He had reached the Croix d'Arcy just as the firing at Montaignac began.
He listened and waited. No discharge of musketry replied to the first
fusillade. There might have been butchery, but combat, no.

Lacheneur understood it all; and he wished that every ball had pierced
his own heart.

He put spurs to his horse and g