behaved bravely. They defended themselves like desperate men. Caught on
the flank, by the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs, and in the rear through
the Rue du Parvis, driven to bay against Notre-Dame, which they
still assailed and Quasimodo defended, at the same time besiegers and
besieged, they were in the singular situation in which Comte Henri
Harcourt, _Taurinum obsessor idem et obsessus_, as his epitaph says,
found himself later on, at the famous siege of Turin, in 1640, between
Prince Thomas of Savoy, whom he was besieging, and the Marquis de
Leganez, who was blockading him.

The battle was frightful. There was a dog's tooth for wolf's flesh,
as P. Mathieu says. The king's cavaliers, in whose midst Phoebus de
Chateaupers bore himself valiantly, gave no quarter, and the slash of
the sword disposed of those who escaped the thrust of the lance. The
outcasts, badly armed foamed and bit with rage. Men, women, children,
hurled themselves on the cruppers and the breasts of the horses, and
hung there like cats, with teeth, finger nails and toe nails. Others
struck the archers' in the face with their torches. Others thrust
iron hooks into the necks of the cavaliers and dragged them down. They
slashed in pieces those who fell.

One was noticed who had a large, glittering scythe, and who, for a long
time, mowed the legs of the horses. He was frightful. He was singing
a ditty, with a nasal intonation, he swung and drew back his scythe
incessantly. At every blow he traced around him a great circle of
severed limbs. He advanced thus into the very thickest of the cavalry,
with the tranquil slowness, the lolling of the head and the regular
breathing of a harvester attacking a field of wheat. It was Chopin
Trouillefou. A shot from an arquebus laid him low.

In the meantime, windows had been opened again. The neighbors hearing
the war cries of the king's troops, had mingled in the affray, and
bullets rained upon the outcasts from every story. The Parvis was filled
with a thick smoke, which the musketry streaked with flame. Through
it one could confusedly distinguish the front of Notre-Dame, and the
decrepit Hotel-Dieu with some wan invalids gazing down from the heights
of its roof all checkered with dormer windows.

At length the vagabonds gave way. Weariness, the lack of good weapons,
the fright of this surprise, the musketry from the windows, the valiant
attack of the king's troops, all overwhelmed them. They forced the
line of a