The House of the Wolf by Stanley J. Weyman

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. To us! In his instincts man is as selfish as any animal that lives.