Worn out with hard fighting, and filled with an overweening sense of security, inspired by their unlooked-for success, the whole of the little garrison had retired to rest, save only a handful of sentinels wearily straining their eyes over the dark city. All through the night these men were content to freeze on the ramparts, chilled to the bone by a cutting east wind, but towards the small hours of morning the icy breath of coming day drove them into the great hall of Charles's palace, where some one had kindled a fire. There they sat before the glowing logs, dozing and drinking and chatting together in a fool's paradise, and clean forgot the little western door by which their friends were wont to come and go, and that a rusty lock and half-a-dozen nails alone secured it. 'This one weak spot, when we were freezing on the battlements, some prowling Isegrin smelt out, and whilst we are rubbing a little life into our poor numbed limbs before Charles's fire, a host of them swarm round it. Some one suggests an axe, it yields at a blow, and the rabid pack rush in so swiftly and so suddenly, and with so little noise, that their cruel fangs are at our throats almost before we are awake. The whole Bourg is alive with men--they seem to spring up from the earth, every crevice and every corner bristles with them, and so dark is it that we cannot distinguish friends from foes. Panic lays hold of us, we lose our heads, turn cowards and sue for mercy, or leap in despair over ramparts as doth poor Giselbert, whose bruised and bleeding body they tie to a horse's tail and drag all round the market-place. The bravest of us take to our heels, and trampling one another down, crush through the narrow bridgeway which leads from Charles's palace into St. Donatian's church, determined there to make our last stand, and then, O wonderment! the howling pack draw off and leave us for a little space at peace.'