The poor peasants kissed his hands with broken thanks, and the rough soldiers around set up a cheer that made the air ring.
When day dawned on that wild scene, it revealed a sight at which the oldest English veteran stood aghast. Half the camp lay in ashes, blotting the clear sky with its smoke. The military engines, constructed with so much labour and cost, were shattered and useless. Hundreds of the duke’s best men had fallen, and so many horses were carried off or disabled that half his knights were dismounted; and, worse than all, of the supplies brought in at such cost of toil and blood, not a morsel was left.
But, furious as the great general was to see the labours of months destroyed in a night, and all his hopes of winning the town blasted in the very moment of success, the uppermost feeling in his brave English heart was an honest, manly admiration of the gallant foe whose skill and courage had triumphed over his utmost efforts; and that admiration rose higher still when some English soldiers, who had been shut into the town with the Bretons on the previous night, and dismissed unharmed at dawn by Bertrand himself, came back with the news of his kindness to the peasants.
“So help me St. George!” cried the duke, “since lance was first lifted in this land, there hath been no such gentle and perfect knight as this same Du Guesclin, and gladly would I tell him so myself. Ho there! let my herald presently go up to the town with trumpet-sound and banner displayed, and say to Messire Bertrand du Guesclin that John of Gaunt prays him to grace our board with his presence this day as a right welcome and honoured guest.”
The duke’s herald was at once admitted by the old commandant, to whom he announced himself as the bearer of a message to Du Guesclin from the Duke of Lancaster.
“Thou wouldst speak with Messire Bertrand thyself?” asked De Penhoën, with the ghost of a smile flickering over his iron face.
“Even so,” said the herald, with a dignity befitting his office, then one of the most important in existence.
“Go down there and thou wilt find him,” said the old Breton, pointing to the courtyard with a grin that puckered his hard visage till it looked like the carved spout of a cathedral.