When it came to this, the Marechal de l'Hopital
stroked his chin with a sense of insecurity, and called the council away
to deliberate; "during which time," says the softened Princess, "leaning
on a window which looked on the St. Esprit, where they were saying mass, I
offered up my prayers to God." At last they came back, and assented to
every one of her propositions.
In a moment she was in the streets again. The first person she met was
Vallon, terribly wounded. "We are lost!" he said. "You are saved!" she
cried, proudly. "I command to-day in Paris, as I commanded in Orleans."
"Vous me rendez la vie," said the reanimated soldier, who had been with
her in her first campaign. On she went, meeting at every step men wounded
in the head, in the body, in the limbs,--on horseback, on foot, on planks,
on barrows,--besides the bodies of the slain. She reached the windows
beside the Porte St. Antoine, and Conde met her there; he rode up, covered
with blood and dust, his scabbard lost, his sword in hand. Before she
could speak, that soul of fire uttered, for the only recorded time in his
career, the word _Despair_: "Ma cousine, vous voyez un homme au
desespoir,"--and burst into tears. But her news instantly revived him, and
his army with him. "Mademoiselle is at the gate," the soldiers cried; and,
with this certainty of a place of refuge, they could do all things.
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