Edmond sat down indifferent to all, and incapable of further thought. After a while he saw a troop of his brethren ascending the heights by different routes. Bertrand appeared soon afterwards on another road mounted with several horsemen. "Are you defeated?" asked Edmond, as they assembled near him. "No," cried Bertrand, "God has given us compete victory, the valleys are strewed with the bodies of the royalists; Cavalier has advanced yonder against the fugitives; Roland has now probably beaten another column, and Solomon their third division. But, as Cavalier knows, that several horsemen have fled, he fears they might make a circuit and fall upon him in the rear, we must therefore still occupy these heights." Edmond had not the courage to ask what had taken place in the village below, but Bertrand began of his own accord. "Now, for once, the hard hearts have been compelled to taste our vengeance, we have at length washed our hands in their blood. They will fear us, brother; the trembling of those that have escaped to-day will teach the others to tremble too. Like destroying angels, Ravanel and Catinat cut their way through them, where these stand, not one of the enemy expects mercy. I have now though been enabled to celebrate a great festival, such a jubilee as I have ever wished for. But many of our brethren, and our best lie there below. The despairing peasants have armed themselves almost in greater numbers than the soldiers. Ah! poor François, the child has been torn by the beasts, Anton, and the flute player, Stephen, have had their beads smashed, one of the villains threw my brother, when the poor fellow was already wounded, into the fire, even the wretched clerk was massacred by our Everard, whereupon I pitched the rogue head over heels directly into a deep well." "And the aged priest?" asked Edmond, scarcely audible, "Him," said one of the troop, "I saw for a long while standing with his prayer-book in the midst of the tumult on the common; right and left men and women were slain by his side, so that I thought, now, now this one or that must strike him. But it was as if they did not see him at all. I afterwards lost sight of him; surely he must be lying there among the dead bodies. Do you know anything of him, brother Christophe?"