l struggling to destroy each other, hastened to
them, followed by the captain of the guards; but before they could
reach them the combatants' hands unloosened, their eyes closed, and
letting go their grasp of their weapons they stiffened in what seemed
like their final agony. A wide stream of blood bubbled round them.

"Oh, brave, brave La Mole!" cried Marguerite, unable any longer to
repress her admiration. "Ah! pardon me a thousand times for having a
moment doubted your courage."

And her eyes filled with tears.

"Alas! alas!" murmured the duchess, "gallant Annibal. Did you ever see
two such intrepid lions, madame?"

And she sobbed aloud.

"Heavens! what ugly thrusts," said the captain, endeavoring to stanch
the streams of blood. "Hola! you, there, come here as quickly as you
can--here, I say"--

He addressed a man who, seated on a kind of tumbril or cart painted red,
appeared in the evening mist singing this old song, which had doubtless
been suggested to him by the miracle of the Cemetery of the Innocents:

"_Bel aubespin fleurissant_
_Verdissant,_
_Le long de ce beau rivage,_
_Tu es vetu, jusqu'au bas_
_Des longs bras_
_D'une lambrusche sauvage._

"_Le chantre rossignolet,_
_Nouvelet,_
_Courtisant sa bien-aimee_
_Pour ses amours alleger_
_Vient logerv
_Tous les ans sous ta ramee._

"_Or, vis, gentil aubespin_
_Vis sans fin;_
_Vis, sans que jamais tonnerre,_
_Ou la cognee, ou les vents_
_Ou le temps_
_Te puissent ruer par._"...[5]

"Hola! he!" shouted the captain a second time, "come when you are
called. Don't you see that these gentlemen need help?"

The carter, whose repulsive exterior and coarse face formed a singular
contrast with the sweet and sylvan song we have just quoted, stopped his
horse, got out, and bending over the two bodies said:

"These be terrible wounds, sure enough, but I have made worse in my
time."

"Who are you, pray?" inquired Marguerite, experiencing, in spite of
herself, a certain vague terror which she could not overcome.

"Madame," replied the man, bowing down to the ground, "I am Maitre
Caboche, headsman to the provostry of Paris, and I have come to hang up
at the gibbet some companions for Monsieur the Admiral."

"Well! and I am the Queen of Navarre," replied Marguerite; "cast your
corpses down there, spread in your cart the housings of our horses, and
bring these