He shook his head. “I think not,” he muttered. And after a moment, “God help you!” he added fervently. “God help and guide you, Madame!”
She turned on him suddenly, fiercely. “Is that all you can do?” she cried. “Is that all the help you can give? You are a man. Go down, lead them out; drive off these cowards who drain our life’s blood, who trade on a woman’s heart! On them! Do something, anything, rather than lie in safety here—here!”
The minister shook his head sadly. “Alas, Madame!” he said, “to sally were to waste life. They outnumber us three to one. If Count Hannibal could do no more than break through last night, with scarce a man unwounded”
“He had the women!”
“And we have not him!”
“He would not have left us!” she cried hysterically.
“I believe it.”
“Had they taken me, do you think he would have lain behind walls? Or skulked in safety here, while—while” Her voice failed her.
He shook his head despondently.
“And that is all you can do?” she cried, and turned from him, and to him again, extending her arms, in bitter scorn. “All you will do? Do you forget that twice he spared your life? That in Paris once, and once in Angers, he held his hand? That always, whether he stood or whether he fled, he held himself between us and harm? Ay, always? And who will now raise a hand for him? Who?”
“Madame!”
“Who? Who? Had he died in the field,” she continued, her voice shaking with grief, her hands beating the parapet—for she had turned from him—“had he fallen where he rode last night, in the front, with his face to the
