Louis Gate, with the grenadiers and a detachment of
artillery, the British colours hoisted on a gun-carriage. Till this
hour I had ever entered and left this town a captive, a price set
on my head, and in the very street where now I walked I had gone
with a rope round my neck, abused and maltreated. I saw our flag
replace the golden lilies of France on the citadel where Doltaire
had baited me, and at the top of Mountain Street, near to the
bishop's palace, our colours also flew.
Every step I took was familiar, yet unfamiliar too. It was a
disfigured town, where a hungry, distracted people huddled among
ruins, and begged for mercy and for food, nor found time in the
general overwhelming to think of the gallant Montcalm, lying in his
shell-made grave at the chapel of the Ursulines, not fifty steps
from where I had looked through the tapestry on Alixe and Doltaire.
The convent was almost deserted now, and as I passed it, on my way
to the cathedral, I took off my hat; for how knew I but that she
I loved best lay there, too, as truly a heroine as the admirable
Montcalm was hero! A solitary bell was clanging on the chapel as
I went by, and I saw three nuns steal past me with bowed heads.
I longed to stop them and ask them of Alixe, for I felt sure that
the Church knew where she was, living or dead, though none of all
I asked knew aught of her, not even the Chevalier de la Darante,
who had come to our camp the night before, accompanied by Monsieur
Joannes, the town major, with terms of surrender.
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