"Since," replied the Admiral, "the reasons which I have this evening alleged against an ineffectual resistance have made so little impression upon your mind, lay your hand upon your heart and answer me this question, Could you, without murmuring against Providence and the husband to whom Heaven has united you, receive the news of a general defeat? Are you prepared to endure the opprobrium of your enemies--the reproaches of your friends--the treachery of partisans--the curses of the people--confiscation, flight, exile--the insolence of the English, the quarrels of the Germans--shame, nakedness, hunger--and, what is worse, to suffer all this in your children? Are you prepared to see your husband branded as a rebel and dragged to a scaffold; while your children, disgraced and ruined, are begging their bread at the hands of their enemies? I give you eight days to reflect upon it, and when you shall be well prepared for such reverses, I will be ready to set forward, and perish with you and our mutual friends." "The eight days are already expired!" she cried. "Go, sir, where your duty calls you. Heaven will not give the victory to our enemies. In the name of God, I call upon you to resist no longer, but to save our brethren, or die in the attempt." On the next morning Coligni was on horseback, with all his retainers round him; and with a heavy heart but a clear conscience, he rode on his way to join Conde at Meaux, which was now, in the early spring of 1562, the head-quarters of the insurgent Huguenots. The high rank of the Prince of Conde, as well as his brilliant abilities and chivalrous courage, caused him to be acknowledged as chief of the Protestant party; but Coligni was looked on by friends and foes as the main pillar of their cause; and it was he that gave organization to the volunteers who flocked around himself and the prince, first at Meaux, and afterward in greater numbers at Orleans, when toward the end of March they succeeded in occupying that important city, and making it a centre of operations for the Huguenot confederacy. Like Cromwell in after times, Coligni relied on the religious enthusiasm as well as the natural bravery of his troops. He exercised them by preaching and prayer as well as by drilling and manoeuvring. He inspired them with his own spirit of austere devotion to their cause; and the Huguenot army was in its first campaigns as conspicuous for good order and morality as for valor; though by degrees it became tainted with a tendency to marauding and to brutal violence.