"Oh, poor, poor Kit!" Croisette cried, bursting suddenly into
violent sobs. "Oh, Kit! Kit!"
CHAPTER X.
HAU, HAU, HUGUENOTS!
His late Majesty, Henry the Fourth, I remember--than whom no
braver man wore sword, who loved danger indeed for its own sake,
and courted it as a mistress--could never sleep on the night
before an action. I have heard him say himself that it was so
before the fight at Arques. Croisette partook of this nature
too, being high-strung and apt to be easily over-wrought, but
never until the necessity for exertion had passed away: while
Marie and I, though not a whit stouter at a pinch, were slower to
feel and less easy to move--more Germanic in fact.
I name this here partly lest it should be thought after what I
have just told of Croisette that there was anything of the woman
about him--save the tenderness; and partly to show that we acted
at this crisis each after his manner. While Croisette turned
pale and trembled, and hid his eyes, I stood dazed, looking from
the desolate house to the face stiffening in the sunshine, and
back again; wondering, though I had seen scores of dead faces
since daybreak, and a plenitude of suffering in all dreadful
shapes, how Providence could let this happen to us.
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