While the partisans were thus engaged in recruiting their strength, the chiefs were assembled in the next room to make some last resolutions for the defence. They sat round the table, on which was placed a tin lamp: Doctor Lorquin, with his dog Pluto, looking inquiringly into his master's face; Jérome, in the corner of the window to the right; Hullin to the left, very pale; Marc Divès, his elbow on the table and cheek in his hand, and his back turned to the door, showed only his brown profile and the tip of his long mustache. Materne alone remained standing, leaning, as was his custom, against the wall behind Lorquin's chair, with his carbine at his feet. The noise of the men in the kitchen could be distinctly heard. When Catherine, summoned by Jean-Claude, entered the room, she heard a sort of groan which made her shudder. It was Hullin who was speaking. "All these brave lads--all these fathers of families, who fell one after the other," he cried, in a heartrending voice, "do you think I did not feel it? Do you think that I would not rather a thousand times have been killed myself? You do not know what I have suffered this night! To lose one's life is nothing; but to bear alone the weight of such a responsibility----" He paused: his trembling lips, the tear which trickled slowly down his cheek, his attitude, all showed the scruples of the worthy man, in face of one of those situations where conscience itself hesitates and seeks further support. Catherine went and sat down quietly in the big arm-chair. A few seconds later Hullin continued in a calmer tone:--"Between eleven o'clock and midnight, Zimmer came up, shouting, 'We are turned! The Germans are coming down the Grosmann! Labarbe is crushed! Jérome can hold out no longer!' What was to be done! Could I beat a retreat? Could I abandon a position which had cost us so much blood--the road to the Donon, the road to Paris? If I had done so, should I not have been a coward? But I had only three hundred men against four thousand at Grandfontaine, and I know not how many descending from the mountain! Well, I decided at any cost to hold it; it was our duty. I said to myself, 'Life is nothing without honor! We will all die; but they shall not say that we have yielded the high-road to France. No, no; they shall not say that.'"