“I desire three things,” announced Mademoiselle:  “first, that the citizens shall be called to arms.”

“It is done,” answered the obsequious officials.

“Next,” she resolutely went on, “that two thousand men shall be sent to relieve the troops of the Prince.”

They pledged themselves to this also.

“Finally,” said the daring lady, conscious of the mine she was springing, and reserving the one essential point till the last, “that the army of Conde shall be allowed free passage into the city.”

The officials, headed by the Marechal de l’Hopital, at once exhibited the most extreme courtesy of demeanor, and begged leave to assure her Highness that under no conceivable circumstances could this request be granted.

She let loose upon them all the royal anger of the House of Bourbon.  She remembered the sights she had just seen; she thought of Rochefoucauld, with his eye shot out and his white garments stained with blood,—­of Guitant shot through the body,—­of Roche-Giffard, whom she pitied, “though a Protestant.”  Conde might, at that moment, be sharing their fate; all depended on her; and so Conrart declares, in his Memoirs, that “Mademoiselle said some strange things to these gentlemen”:  as, for instance, that her attendants should throw them out of the window; that she would pluck off the Marshal’s beard; that he should die by no hand but her’s, and the like.  When it came to this, the Marechal de l’Hopital stroked his chin with a sense of insecurity, and called the council away to deliberate; “during which time,” says the softened Princess, “leaning on a window which looked on the St. Esprit, where they were saying mass, I offered up my prayers to God.”  At last they came back, and assented to every one of her propositions.

In a moment she was in the streets again.  The first person she met was Vallon, terribly wounded.  “We are lost!” he said.  “You are saved!” she cried, proudly.  “I command to-day in Paris, as I commanded in Orleans.”  “Vous me rendez la vie,” said the reanimated soldier, who had been with her in her first campaign.  On she went, meeting at every step men wounded in the head, in the body, in the limbs,—­on horseback, on foot, on planks, on barrows,—­besides the bodies of the slain.  She reached the windows beside the Porte St. Antoine, and Conde met her there; he rode up, covered with blood and dust, his scabbard lost, his sword in hand.  Before she could speak, that soul of fire uttered, for the only recorded time in his career, the word Despair:  “Ma cousine, vous voyez un homme au desespoir,”—­and burst into tears.  But her news instantly revived him, and his army with him.  “Mademoiselle is at the gate,” the soldiers cried; and, with this certainty of a place of refuge, they could do all things.  In this famous fight, five thousand men defended themselves against twelve thousand, for eight hours.  “Did you see Conde himself?” they asked Turenne, after it was over.  “I saw not one, but a dozen Condes,” was the answer; “he was in every place at once.”