The sportsman Count of La Rochejaquelein had it all his own way at the Aubiers. He took the town, and captured large supplies, and gleefully perched upon the cemetery wall, fired no less than two hundred telling shots. Thence he rode by night to Bonchamp and D’Elbée, and to the weary allies of Anjou, bringing aid and arms; and, as a gift not least, the contagious cheer that was in him. When he had fulfilled his public duty, but not before that, he flew to the rescue of his friends. Scarcely had Henri left Clisson, in the spring, when Lescure and all his family were seized as suspects, and conducted to Bressuire, but forgotten there when fear caused an evacuation of the borough. Henri himself easily carried it, and burst in upon them at the château, crying that he had freed them. By a comical inconsistency, great numbers of the Republican inhabitants rushed for protection back to Clisson, as soon as Citizen Lescure, walking a free man from Bressuire, had entered the gates. That godly gentleman made bashful Henri kiss every woman among them, to ease their fears of the “monster” whom they believed him to be. Six victories, due to Henri’s restless energy, followed in swift succession. Though his growth, in all things, was steadily towards reasonableness and the golden mean, his chief early characteristic was hare-brained intrepidity; a habit of confronting too near, pursuing too far, “combating with giants,” as old Burton says of his warrior, “running first upon a breach, and, as another Phillipus, riding into the thickest of his enemies.” He was wholly without fear, and often, at first, without foresight; and it took many bitter denials and reverses to teach him the pardonableness of deliberation and second thought in others. But while he lived, wherever he went, he was a force. He was of the stuff of Homer’s joyous men. His decisive fashion swayed elder and better soldiers. His troops were his for risks such as no general else besought them to run; every day he won their hearts anew by some spurt of daring, some astonishing fooling with death or failure. Many a dragoon was cut down with his sabre; horses were slain under him again and again. It is said of him that he never took a prisoner without offering him a single fight, sword to sword. This laughing audacity of his had no cant in it. It was the metal of which he was made, that which he lived by, the blameless outcome of himself: a thing to sadden and exasperate his companions, and fill them with foreboding. Pilgrim-shells are quartered upon the arms of his house, “the scallop-shells of quiet,” as the poet sings. A more sarcastic advice for the La Rochejaqueleins it would be impossible to conceive!