Page:The Works of Honoré de Balzac Volume 29.djvu/66

38 "Saint-Anne of Auray! Don't let them get away! Scatter yourselves, my gars!"

As either wing commanded by Merle and Gérard withdrew from the thick of the fray, each little column was pertinaciously followed by Chouans in greatly superior numbers. The old goatskins surrounded the men under Merle and Gérard on all sides, once more uttering those threatening cries of theirs, like the howls of wild beasts.

"Silence, gentlemen!" shouted Beau-Pied; "we can't hear ourselves being killed."

The joke put fresh heart into the Blues.

The fighting was no longer concentrated upon a single point, the Republicans defended themselves in three different places on the plateau of the Pèlerine, and the valleys, so quiet hitherto, re-echoed with the sound of the firing. Hours might have passed and left the issue still undecided, or the struggle might have come to an end for lack of combatants. The courage of Blues and Chouans was evenly matched, and the fierce desire of battle was surging as it were from the one side to the other, when far away and faintly there sounded the tap of a drum, and from the direction of the sound the corps that it heralded must be crossing the valley of the Couësnon.

"That is the National Guard from Fougères!" cried Gudin; "Vannier must have fallen in with them!"

His voice reached the young leader and his ferocious aide-de-camp; the Royalists began to give way; but a cry like a wild beast's from Marche-à-Terre promptly checked them. Two or three orders were given in a low voice by the chief, and translated by Marche-à-Terre into Bas-Breton for the Chouans; and the retreat began, conducted with a skill which baffled the Republicans, and even their commandant. In the first place, such of the Chouans as were not disabled drew up in line at the word, and presented a formidable front to the enemy, while the wounded and the remainder of them fell behind to load their guns. Then all at once, with a swiftness of which Marche-à-Terre had given an example,