"She calls us cowards, you see!" "What business has she to find fault with us?" "Is she better than we are, I should like to know?" "Ah, we have all been too kind to her!" "And now she wants to give herself fine lady airs, and to domineer over us! If we choose to torment Mont Saint-Jean, what need has she to interfere?" "Since it has come to this, I tell you what, Mont Saint-Jean, you shall fare the worse for it for the future." "Take this to begin with!" said one of the most violent of the party, giving her a blow. "And if you meddle again with what does not concern you, La Goualeuse, we will serve you the same." "Yes, that we will." "But that is not all!" said La Louve. "La Goualeuse must ask our pardon for having called us cowards. She must and she shall! If we don't put a stop to her goings on, she will soon leave us without the power of saying our soul is our own, and we are great fools not to have seen this sooner." "Make her ask our pardon." "On her knee." "On both knees." "Or we will serve her precisely the same as we did her protegee, Mont Saint-Jean!" "Down on her knees! Down with her!" "Lo! we are cowards, are we?" "Dare to say it again!" Fleur-de-Marie allowed this tumult to pass away, ere she replied to the many furious voices that were raging around her. Then, casting a mild and melancholy glance at the exasperated crowd, she said to La Louve, who persisted in vociferating, "Will you dare to call us cowards again?" "You? Oh, no, not you! I call this poor woman, whom you have so roughly treated, whom you have dragged through the mud, and whose clothes you have nearly torn off, a coward. Do you not see how she trembles, and dares not even look at you? No, no! I say again, 'tis she who is a coward, for being thus afraid of you." Fleur-de-Marie had touched the right chord; in vain might she have appealed to their sense of justice and duty, in order to allay their bitter irritation against poor Mont Saint-Jean; the stupid or brutalised minds of the prisoners would alike have been inaccessible to her pleadings; but, by addressing herself to that sentiment of generosity, which is never wholly extinct, even in the most depraved characters, she kindled a spark of pity, that required but skilful management to fan into a flame of commiseration, instead of hatred and violence. La Louve, amid their continued murmurings against La Goualeuse and her protegee, felt, and confessed, that their conduct had been both unwomanly and cowardly. Fleur-de-Marie would not carry her first triumph too far. She contented herself with merely saying: