So stubborn was the resistance offered by the defenders of the barricade that the Municipalists, after sustaining heavy losses, were compelled to beat a retreat, which they effected in good order. The firing had ceased for several minutes when suddenly a shot was heard in the near vicinity, and, almost immediately after, the sound of horses approaching at a gallop. Presently, on the rear side of the barricade, a colonel of dragoons hove in sight, followed by a number of horsemen, sabers in hand, like their commander, driving before them a group of insurgents who fired at intervals as they retreated on the run. It was Colonel Plouernel. Separated from his squadron by an onrush of insurgents, he was endeavoring to cut himself a passage to the boulevard, not imagining he would find his path barred at that spot by a barricade. The combat, suspended for a moment, broke out afresh. At first the defenders of the barricade believed that the small number of troopers was the vanguard of a regiment which meant to take them in the rear, and thus place them between two fires, by the return of the Municipalists to the assault. The fifteen or twenty dragoons commanded by Colonel Plouernel were received with a general discharge of musketry. Several of the dragoons fell; the colonel himself was wounded. But obedient to his natural intrepidity, he drove his spurs into his horse's flanks, waved his sword and cried out: "Dragoons! Cut down this rabble with your swords!" The colonel's horse gave an enormous bound; it brought him to the very base of the barricade, but the animal slipped over the rolling cobblestones and fell prone. Although wounded and pinned to the ground under his mount, the Count of Plouernel still defended himself with heroic valor. His every sword thrust found its mark. But it was all of no avail; he was about to succumb to superior numbers when, at the risk of his own life, Monsieur Lebrenn, assisted by his son and George, although the latter was wounded, threw themselves between the prostrate colonel and his exasperated assailants, and succeeded in extricating him from under his horse, and in pushing him into the shop. "Friends! These dragoons are isolated; they are in no condition to resist us; let us disarm them; let there be no useless carnage--they are our brothers!" someone cried. "Mercy to the soldiers--but death to their colonel!" cried the men who had just been driven to the spot before the merciless and headlong onslaught of the Count of Plouernel. "Death to the colonel!" "Yes! Yes!" repeated several voices. "No!" shouted back the linendraper, barring the door with his gun, while George came to his support. "No! No! No massacre after battle! No cowardice!" "The colonel killed my brother with a pistol shot fired within an inch of his face--down there, at the corner of the street," bellowed a man with bloodshot eyes, his mouth foaming with rage, and brandishing a sword. "Death to the colonel!"