the Rue Saint Honore, leaving four
of his guards dead on the field of battle.

The marshal then entered the Rue Saint Honore, but there he was opposed
by the barricades of the mendicant of Saint Eustache. They were guarded,
not only by armed men, but even by women and children. Master Friquet,
the owner of a pistol and of a sword which Louvieres had given him, had
organized a company of rogues like himself and was making a tremendous
racket.

The marshal thought this barrier not so well fortified as the others
and determined to break through it. He dismounted twenty men to make
a breach in the barricade, whilst he and others, remaining on their
horses, were to protect the assailants. The twenty men marched
straight toward the barrier, but from behind the beams, from among the
wagon-wheels and from the heights of the rocks a terrible fusillade
burst forth and at the same time Planchet's halberdiers appeared at the
corner of the Cemetery of the Innocents, and Louvieres's bourgeois at
the corner of the Rue de la Monnaie.

The Marechal de la Meilleraie was caught between two fires, but he was
brave and made up his mind to die where he was. He returned blow for
blow and cries of pain began to be heard in the crowd. The guards,
more skillful, did greater execution; but the bourgeois, more numerous,
overwhelmed them with a veritable hurricane of iron. Men fell around
him as they had fallen at Rocroy or at Lerida. Fontrailles, his
aide-de-camp, had an arm broken; his horse had received a bullet in
his neck and he had difficulty in controlling him, maddened by pain.
In short, he had reached that supreme moment when the bravest feel a
shudder in their veins, when suddenly, in the direction of the Rue de
l'Arbre-Sec, the crowd opened, crying: "Long live the coadjutor!" and
Gondy, in surplice and cloak, appeared, moving tranquilly in the midst
of the fusillade and bestowing his benedictions to the right and left,
as undisturbed as if he were leading a procession of the Fete Dieu.

All fell to their knees. The marshal recognized him and hastened to meet
him.

"Get me out of this, in Heaven's name!" he said, "or I shall leave my
carcass here and those of all my men."

A great tumult arose, in the midst of which even the noise of thunder
could not have been heard. Gondy raised his hand and demanded silence.
All were still.

"My children," he said, "this is the Marechal de la Meilleraie, as to
whose intentions you have been de