rty into the breach.
I have read in the essays of Monsieur Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, of
Perigord, that he feared nothing but _fear_--and it is a wise saying
of that Perigord gentleman. So it was in the schloss at Mitau that
August night--we were afraid of nothing but fear, for we were
certainly not afraid to meet death in any shape. There was plenty for
all of us to do, Count Saxe himself shouldering a musket, and firing
through the slits of windows; but I knew that he was not the man to be
trapped like a rat in a hole, and I made sure he had some scheme in
his head by which we were to be saved from hoisting a handkerchief on
a ramrod--and waited for him to tell us what it was.

Meanwhile, the demoniac yelling kept up, together with the volleys of
musketry. The Russians had not then learned to transport light guns on
wheels, the King of Prussia having to teach them that trick near
twenty years later; so that we knew, what men do not often know in our
circumstances, exactly what we had to contend against. After an hour
of this volleying and yelling on the part of the Russians to which we
replied by putting leaden bullets in them, Count Saxe came up to me.
It was then after one o'clock--in those latitudes a time that is
neither day nor night, nor morning, nor evening, but a ghostlike hour,
in which all shapes, all things, the very sky and earth, are strange
to human beings. I saw by the faint half-light a smile on my master's
face; he was ever the handsomest man alive, and when he had the light
of battle in his eye, he was more beautiful than Apollo, lord of the
unerring bow. He was still in his court costume, but there was a great
rent in his velvet coat made by the musket he had occasionally used,
his gem-embroidered waistcoat was soiled with powder, and his lace
cravat and ruffles were in rags.

"Babache," said he, "I have it. Do you see yonder brick wall to the
left where the Russians have just tethered thirty or forty horses? The
moon is sinking fast,--and as soon as it fades, the drawbridge goes
down like lightning; you and I and Beauvais on horseback dash across
it to the left, the other sixteen men rush after us, seize each man a
horse, and make for the highway to Uzmaiz, not a quarter of a mile
away. I believe every man of us stands a good chance to escape."

"And Mademoiselle Capello and Gaston Cheverny?" I asked.

"They must go by way of the tunnel. It will bring them out at the
market-place, where there