'God forbid!'I muttered,thinking with a shudder of those before us.This led me to ask him if a party resembling ours in number,and including two women,had passed that way.He answered,Yes,after sunset the evening before;that their horses were stumbling with fatigue and the men swearing in pure weariness.He believed that they had not entered the town,but had made a rude encampment half a mile beyond it;and had again broken this up,and ridden southwards two or three hours before our arrival.
'Then we may overtake them to-day?'I said.
'By your leave,sir,'he answered,with grave meaning.'I think you are more likely to meet them.'
Shrugging my shoulders,I thanked him shortly and left him;the full importance of preventing my men hearing what I had heard--lest the panic which possessed these townspeople should seize on them also--being already in my mind.Nevertheless the thought came too late,for on turning my horse I found one of the foremost,a long,solemn-faced man,had already found his way to Maignan's stirrup;where he was dilating so eloquently upon the enemy which awaited us southwards that the countenances of half the troopers were as long as his own,and I saw nothing for it but to interrupt his oration by a smart application of my switch to his shoulders.Having thus stopped him,and rated him back to his fellows,I gave the word to march.The men obeyed mechanically,we swung into a canter,and for a moment the danger was over.
But I knew that it would recur again and again.Stealthily marking the faces round me,and listening to the whispered talk which went on,I saw the terror spread from one to another.
Voices which earlier in the day had been raised in song and jest grew silent.Great reckless fellows of Maignan's following,who had an oath and a blow for all comers,and to whom the deepest ford seemed to be child's play,rode with drooping heads and knitted brows;or scanned with ill-concealed anxiety the strange haze before us,through which the roofs of the town,and here and there a low hill or line of poplars,rose to plainer view.Maignan himself,the stoutest of the stout,looked grave,and had lost his swaggering air.Only three persons preserved their SANG-FROID entire.Of these,M.d'Agen rode as if he had heard nothing,and Simon Fleix as if he feared nothing;while Fanchette,gazing eagerly forward,saw,it was plain,only one object in the mist,and that was her Mistress's face.
'We found the gates of the town open,and this,which proved to be the herald of stranger sights,daunted the hearts of my men more than the most hostile reception.As we entered,our horses'hoofs,clattering loudly on the pavement,awoke a hundred echoes in the empty houses to right and left.The main street,flooded with sunshine,which made its desolation seem a hundred times more formidable,stretched away before us,bare and empty;or haunted only by a few slinking dogs,and prowling wretches,who fled,affrighted at the unaccustomed sounds,or stood and eyed us listlessly as me passed.A bell tolled;in the distance we heard the wailing of women.The silent ways,the black cross which marked every second door,the frightful faces which once or twice looked out from upper windows and blasted our sight,infected my men with terror so profound and so ungovernable that at last discipline was forgotten;and one shoving his horse before another in narrow places,there was a scuffle to be first.One,and then a second,began to trot.The trot grew into a shuffling canter.The gates of the inn lay open,nay seemed to invite us to enter;but no one turned or halted.Moved by a single impulse we pushed breathlessly on and on,until the open country was reached,and we who had entered the streets in silent awe,swept out and over the bridge as if the fiend were at our heels.
That I shared in this flight causes me no shame even now,for my men were at the time ungovernable,as the best-trained troops are when seized by such panics;and,moreover,I could have done no good by remaining in the town,where the strength of the contagion was probably greater and the inn larder like to be as bare,as the hillside.Few towns are without a hostelry outside the gates for the convenience of knights of the road or those who would avoid the dues,and Chateauroux proved no exception to this rule.A short half-mile from the walls we drew rein before a second encampment raised about a wayside house.It scarcely needed the sound of music mingled with brawling voices to inform us that the wilder spirits of the town had taken refuge here,and were seeking to drown in riot and debauchery,as I have seen happen in a besieged place,the remembrance of the enemy which stalked abroad in the sunshine.Our sudden appearance,while it put a stop to the mimicry of mirth,brought out a score of men and women in every stage of drunkenness and dishevelment,of whom some,with hiccoughs and loose gestures,cried to us to join them,while others swore horridly at being recalled to the present,which,with the future,they were endeavouring to forget.
I cursed them in return for a pack of craven wretches,and threatening to ride down those who obstructed us,ordered my men forward;halting eventually a quarter of a mile farther on,where a wood of groundling oaks which still wore last year's leaves afforded fair shelter.Afraid to leave my men myself,lest some should stray to the inn and others desert altogether,I requested M.d'Agen to return thither with Maignan and Simon,and bring us what forage and food we required.This he did with perfect success,though not until after a scuffle,in which Maignan showed himself a match for a hundred.We watered the horses at a neighbouring brook,and assigning two hours to rest and refreshment--a great part of which M.d'Agen and I spent walking up and down in moody silence,each immersed in his own thoughts--we presently took the road again with renewed spirits.
