HAU, HAU, HUGUENOTS!

His late Majesty, Henry the Fourth, I remember--than whom no
braver man wore sword, who loved danger indeed for its own sake,
and courted it as a mistress--could never sleep on the night
before an action. I have heard him say himself that it was so
before the fight at Arques. Croisette partook of this nature
too, being high-strung and apt to be easily over-wrought, but
never until the necessity for exertion had passed away: while
Marie and I, though not a whit stouter at a pinch, were slower to
feel and less easy to move--more Germanic in fact.

I name this here partly lest it should be thought after what I
have just told of Croisette that there was anything of the woman
about him--save the tenderness; and partly to show that we acted
at this crisis each after his manner. While Croisette turned
pale and trembled, and hid his eyes, I stood dazed, looking from
the desolate house to the face stiffening in the sunshine, and
back again; wondering, though I had seen scores of dead faces
since daybreak, and a plenitude of suffering in all dreadful
shapes, how Providence could let this happen to us. To us! In
his instincts man is as selfish as any animal that lives.

I saw nothing indeed of the dead face and dead house after the
first convincing glance. I saw instead with hot, hot eyes the
old castle at home, the green fields about the brook, and the
grey hills rising from them; and the terrace, and Kit coming to
meet us, Kit with white face and parted lips and avid eyes that
questioned us! And we with no comfort to give her, no lover to