th drooping
heads and knitted brows; or scanned with ill-concealed anxiety the
strange haze before us, through which the roofs of the town, and here
and there a low hill or line of poplars, rose to plainer view. Maignan
himself, the stoutest of the stout, looked grave, and had lost his
swaggering air. Only three persons preserved their SANG-FROID entire. Of
these, M. d'Agen rode as if he had heard nothing, and Simon Fleix as if
he feared nothing; while Fanchette, gazing eagerly forward, saw, it was
plain, only one object in the mist, and that was her Mistress's face.

'We found the gates of the town open, and this, which proved to be the
herald of stranger sights, daunted the hearts of my men more than the
most hostile reception. As we entered, our horses' hoofs, clattering
loudly on the pavement, awoke a hundred echoes in the empty houses to
right and left. The main street, flooded with sunshine, which made its
desolation seem a hundred times more formidable, stretched away before
us, bare and empty; or haunted only by a few slinking dogs, and prowling
wretches, who fled, affrighted at the unaccustomed sounds, or stood and
eyed us listlessly as me passed. A bell tolled; in the distance we heard
the wailing of women. The silent ways, the black cross which marked
every second door, the frightful faces which once or twice looked out
from upper windows and blasted our sight, infected my men with terror so
profound and so ungovernable that at last discipline was forgotten;
and one shoving his horse before another in narrow places, there was
a scuffle to be first. One, and then a second, began to trot. The trot
grew into a shuffling canter. The gates of the inn lay open, nay seemed
to invite us to enter; but no one turned or halted. Moved by a single
impulse we pushed breathlessly on and on, until the open country was
reached, and we who had entered the streets in silent awe, swept out and
over the bridge as if the fiend were at our heels.

That I shared in this flight causes me no shame even now, for my men
were at the time ungovernable, as the best-trained troops are when
seized by such panics; and, moreover, I could have done no good by
remaining in the town, where the strength of the contagion was probably
greater and the inn larder like to be as bare, as the hillside. Few
towns are without a hostelry outside the gates for the convenience of
knights of the road or those who would avoid the dues, and Chateauroux
proved n