In the rider's heart were a hundred things; among them fear, that
miserable depression which comes with the first defeats of life, the
falling of the mercury from passionate activity to that frozen numbness
which betrays the exhausted nerve and despairing mind. The horse could
not go fast enough; the panic of flight was on him. He was conscious of
it, despised himself for it; but he could not help it. Yet, if he were
overtaken, he would fight; yes, fight to the end, whatever it might be.
Nicolas Lavilette had begun to unwind the coil of fortune and ambition
which his mother had long been engaged in winding.
A mile or two behind was another horse and another rider. The animal was
clean of limb, straight and shapely of body, with a leg like a lady's,
and heart and wind to travel till she dropped. This mare the little
black notary, Shangois, had cheerfully stolen from beside the tent of the
English general. The bridle-rein hung upon the wrist of the notary's
palsied left hand, and in his right hand he carried the long sabre of an
artillery officer, which he had picked up on the battlefield. He rode
like a monkey clinging to the back of a hound, his shoulder hunched, his
body bent forward even with the mare's neck, his knees gripping the
saddle with a frightened tenacity, his small, black eyes peering into the
darkness before him, and his ears alert to the sound of pursuers.
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