had been taken during a
reconnoissance.

"Good-morning, Belin," said the king, who knew him. "Embrace me for your
welcome appearance."

Belin did so, taking the situation philosophically.

"To give you appetite for dinner," he said, "you are about to have work
to do with thirty thousand foot and ten thousand horse. Where are your
forces?" he continued, looking around curiously.

"You don't see them all, M. de Belin," answered Henry. "You don't reckon
the good God and the good right, but they are ever with me."

Belin had told the truth. About ten o'clock Mayenne made his attack. It
was a day ill-suited for battle, for there lay upon the field so thick
a fog that the advancing lines could not see each other at ten paces
apart. Despite this, the battle proceeded briskly, and for nearly three
hours the two armies struggled, now one, now the other, in the
ascendant.

Henry fought as vigorously as any of his men, all being so confusedly
mingled in the fog that there was little distinction between officers
and soldiers. At one time he found himself so entangled in a medley of
disorganized troopers that he loudly shouted,--

"Courage, gentlemen; pray, courage! Are there not among you fifty
gentlemen willing to die with their king?"

The confusion was somewhat alleviated by the arrival, at this juncture,
of five hundred men from Dieppe, whose opportune coming the king gladly
greeted. Springing from his horse, he placed himself beside Chatillon,
their leader, to fight in the trenches. The battle, which had been hot
at this point, now grew furious, and for some fifteen minutes there was
a hand-to-hand struggle in the fog, like that of two armies fighting in
the dead of night.

Then came a welcome change. For what followed we may quote Sully. "When
things were in this desperate state," he says, "the fog, which had been
very thick all the morning, dropped down suddenly, and the cannon of the
castle of Arques, getting sight of the enemy's army, a volley of four
pieces was fired, which made four beautiful lanes in their squadrons and
battalions. That pulled them up quite short; and three or four volleys
in succession, which produced marvellous effects, made them waver, and,
little by little, retire all of them behind the turn of the valley, out
of cannon-shot, and finally to their quarters."

Mayenne was defeated. The king held the field. He pursued the enemy for
some distance, and then returned to Arques to return thanks