Anne had no wish to go, no wish to see. She pictured her lover in the _melee_ whence rose those appalling cries; and gladly would she have hidden her head in the bedclothes and poured out her heart in prayer for him. But Madame persisted, and she yielded, went into the passage and opened the small window. With the cold air entered a fresh volume of sound. On the walls and timbered gables opposite her--and so near that she could well-nigh touch them with her extended arm--strange lights played luridly; and here and there, at dormers on a level with her, pale faces showed and vanished by turns. She looked down. For a moment, in the confusion, in the medley of moving forms, she could discern little or nothing. Then, as her eyes became more accustomed to the sight, she made out that the tide of conflict was running inward into the town, a sign that the invaders were gaining the mastery. "Well?" Madame Royaume asked, her voice querulous. Anne strove to say something that would soothe her mother. But a sob choked her, and when she regained her speech she felt herself impelled, she knew not why, to tell the truth. "I fear our people are falling back," she murmured, trembling so violently that she could barely stand. "How far? Where are they, child?" Her mother's voice was eager. "Where are they?" "They are almost under the window!" And then withdrawing her head with a shudder, while she clung for support to the frame of the window: "They are fighting underneath me now," she said. "God pity them!" "And who is--are we still getting the worst of it?" Forced by a kind of fascination, Anne looked out again. "Yes, there is one man, a big man, leads them on," she said, in the voice of one who, painfully absorbed in a sight, reports it involuntarily. "He is driving our people before him. Ah! he has struck one down this moment. He is almost underneath us now. But his people will not follow him! They are standing. He--he waves them on!" "He is beneath us?" Madame's voice sounded strangely near, strangely insistent. But Anne, wrapt in what she saw, did not heed it. "Yes! He is a dozen paces in front of his men. He is underneath us now. He urges them to follow him! He towers above them! He is----" She broke off; close to her sounded a heavy breathing, that even above the babel of the street caught her ear. She drew in her head, looked, and, overwrought by that which she had been witnessing, she shrieked aloud.