First of all, from the grenadiers drawn up behind their artillery among the dunes, where the corvette's fire could not touch them, came Rouget de Lisle, his scarcely three-years-old immortality upon him, to parley with Sombreuil. When he went back, Hoche, for the first time, showed himself, and Sombreuil rode out of the fort to meet him. From just within the low wall La Vireville watched the interview of the two young soldiers, the victor and the vanquished. No one of either force was near enough to hear what they said to each other. But reiterated shouts came from the Republican ranks: "Lay down your arms, comrades!" "Surrender, and you shall be safe!" The rain, falling, falling, seemed a fit pall for the broken hopes that were going down in night, the melancholy cry of the gulls that wheeled overhead a fit requiem. The golden lilies were in the dust, and all was vain--ardour and sacrifice and devotion--as vain as the fury and despair that saw them wither, watered though they were with the best blood of France. Sombreuil came back from his brief interview. It went instantly through the lines of waiting Royalists that he had bargained with Hoche for their lives--for all their lives except his own--at the price of capitulation. And indeed he was heard to say to those who pressed round him, "My friends, save yourselves, or else surrender!" But there was no possibility of saving themselves now. The English ships, having done all they could, had withdrawn into the middle of the bay; not a boat was visible. Only the corvette still continued her stubborn fire. . . . And suddenly the unfortunate young leader realised that the last door was closed, for La Vireville saw him, in a paroxysm of despair, strike spurs into his horse and try to force him over the rocks into the sea--not the only man there to prefer the Roman ending. But the animal, rearing violently, refused the leap, and in a moment or two his rider had regained his self-command, had dismounted, and was attempting, with his handkerchief, to signal the _Lark_ to cease firing. Evidently the signal was not seen, for the corvette's guns still thundered away at the beach, and Hoche, coming up with the two 'representatives of the people,' Tallien and Blad, in their plumed head-dresses, seemed to be expostulating with Sombreuil on the point. "He says that if a man of his is killed----" reported a youth near enough to hear, and left the sentence significantly unfinished. "A lieutenant of the régiment de la Marine is going to swim off to the corvette." "Then he will be drowned for certain," muttered La Vireville, turning and looking at that wild sea which must have put an end to René's last faint chance of escape. (But he was wrong about the swimmer, for Gesril du Papeu not only accomplished his mission, but swam back again--to another kind of death.)