UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES BROWSING ROOM itMBBJP^M^sa THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES |l?onote tie ISal^ac JJ^onor^ tie ISal^ac MILITARY AND POLITICAL LIFE VOLUME I LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND COMPLETE COPIES NO. 713 ■r-r'^rit'./ t.-n j.^ ij j; -, a. AT LA VI VET I ERE * * * with eyes filled zvith hate, for she already felt a terrible craving for revenge springing up in her heart. Seeing death behind her, her pozverlessness choked her. Her brain whirled as if she were going mad ; thereupon, instead of killing herself, she seized the szuord, brandished it over the marquis' head, and buried it in his body up to the hilt. THE NOVELS OF HONORE DE BALZAC NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME COMPLETELY TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH THE CHOUANS BY G. BURNHAM IVES WITH FIVE ETCHINGS BY RICARDO DE LOS RIOS, AFTER PAINTINGS BY EDOUARD TOUDOUZE IN ONE VOLUME PRINTED ONLY FOR SUBSCRIBERS BY GEORGE BARRIE & SON, PHILADELPHIA COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY GEORGE BARRIE A SON ■ • - ' ■..•''• " • . • '. .'■\,'|' ... . , , ',-'•• .• . . . ! 9 « 8 O to ii^ ^ "P9 ^ THE CHOUANS OR BRETAGNE IN 1799 189931 TO MONSIEUR THEODORE DABLIN MERCHANT. To the first friend, the first work DE BALZAC THE AMBUSCADE * Early in the year VIII., in the first days of Vende- miaire, or, to conform to the calendar now in use, toward the close of the month of September, 1799, a hundred or more peasants and a considerable number of bourgeois, who had left Fougeres in the morning on their way to Mayenne, were climbing the mountain of La Pelerine, which lies halfway between Fougeres and Ernee, a small town where travellers generally stop to rest. This detachment, divided into several groups of unequal size, pre- sented such an extraordinary collection of costumes and an assemblage of individuals belonging to so many different localities and professions, that it will be well to describe the characteristic differences be- tween them, in order to give this narrative the vivid coloring on which so high a price is set to-day, although, according to some critics, it interferes with the delineation of sentiment. A part of the peasants — and it was the larger (5) 6 THE CHOUANS part — were barefooted and had no other clothing than large goatskins which covered them from the neck to the knees and trousers of very coarse white cotton, whose badly-trimmed yarn was typical of the indifference of the province in industrial matters. The flattened locks of their long hair joined so naturally the hair of the goatskin and concealed so entirely their downcast faces, that one could easily take the skin for their own, and confound the poor devils, at first sight, with the animals whose spoils served thena as clothing. But soon you saw their eyes gleaming through the hair like drops of dew through dense foliage ; and their glances, while denoting human intelligence, certain- ly spoke more of terror than of pleasure. Their heads were surmounted by dirty red woollen caps, like the Phrygian cap adopted by the Republic as the emblem of liberty. Every man carried on his shoulder a thick club of gnarled oak, at the end of which hung a long cotton wallet with but little in- side. Others wore, over their caps, broad-brimmed hats of coarse felt, adorned with a sort of fringe in wool of various colors, which surrounded the crown. These latter were dressed throughout in the same coarse cotton of which the trousers and wallets of the first were made, and there was almost nothing about their costume that belonged to the new civil- ization. Their long hair fell over the collar of a round jacket which did not reach to the hips, with small square pockets at the sides, — a garment pe- culiar to the peasants of the West. Beneath this THE CHOUANS 7 open jacket could be seen a waistcoat of the same cotton, with large buttons. Some of them marched in wooden shoes, while others, for economy's sake, carried their leather shoes in their hands. This costume, less original than the preceding, soiled by long usage and blackened by sweat and dust, had the historic merit of serving as a transition to the almost sumptuous garb of some few men who were scattered here and there among the motley as- semblage like bright flowers. In very truth their blue linen trousers and their red or yellow waist- coats, like square cuirasses, embellished with two parallel rows of brass buttons, stood out as sharply against the white clothes and the goatskins of their comrades as bluebells and poppies in a field of grain. Some were shod with the clogs that the peasants of Bretagne know how to make for themselves ; but almost all had heavy hob-nailed leather shoes and coats of very coarse cloth, cut like the old French coats, whose shape is still religiously adhered to by our peasants. Their shirt collars were fastened by silver buttons, representing hearts or anchors. Lastly, their wallets seemed to be better supplied than those of their companions, and several of them added to their travelling equipment, a flask, full of eau-de-vie doubtless, which hung by a strap from the neck. Some townspeople appeared among these half- savage men, as if to mark the last limit of the civil- ization of those regions. With round hats, flat hats or caps on their heads, shod with half-boots or with 8 THE CHOUANS shoes kept in place by gaiters, they, like the peasants, presented a remarkable variety in their costumes. Some half a score of them wore the republican jacket known under the name of carma- gnole. Others, well-to-do mechanics doubtless, were clad from head to foot in cloth of the same color. Those who were most elegantly dressed were distinguished by frockcoats and redingotes of blue or green cloth, more or less threadbare. These last, veritable personages, wore boots of various shapes and toyed with heavy canes like men who bear up stoutly against ill fortune. Some carefully powdered heads, some neatly braided queues denoted that sort of care of the person which is inspired by a beginning of education or of fortune. As you looked over these men, who seemed to have been picked up at random and to be amazed to find themselves in company, you would have said that it was the population of some village driven from their homes by a conflagration. But the period and the locality imparted an entirely different in- terest to this mass of men. An observer, familiar with the secret of the civil discords by which France was agitated at that time, would have found it a simple matter to identify the small number of citi- zens upon whose fidelity the Republic could rely in that troop, composed almost wholly of men who had borne arms against it four years before. One last striking feature left no manner of doubt as to the difference of opinion which divided the assemblage. THE CHOUANS 9 Only the republicans marched with something like cheerfulness, whereas the other members of the party, despite the noticeable differences in costume, exhibited upon their faces and in their bearing, the unvarying expression that misfortune causes. Bourgeois and peasants, all bore the imprint of pro- found melancholy ; there was something savage in their silence and they seemed to be bending beneath the burden of one universal thought, terrible beyond question, but carefully concealed, for their faces were impenetrable ; but the unusual moderation of their steps might denote some secret design. From time to time, some of them, made conspicuous by rosaries hanging from their necks, despite the risk they incurred in retaining that emblem of a religion that was suppressed rather than destroyed, shook their long hair and raised their heads suspiciously. At such times they stealthily scrutinized the woods, the paths and the cliffs by which the road was shut in, but they did it after the manner of a dog with his nose in the air, trying to scent game at a dis- tance ; then, hearing only the monotonous sound of their silent companions' footsteps, they would lower their heads again and resume their despairing ex- pression, like criminals on the way to the galleys, there to live and die. The march of this column toward Mayenne, the heterogeneous elements of which it was composed and the diverse sentiments that it expressed were readily explained by the presence of another troop forming the head of the detachment. The troop 10 THE CHOUANS consisted of about one hundred and fifty soldiers, with arms and baggage, under the command of a chef de demi-hrigade. It may be well to inform those who did not witness the drama of the Revolution that that title replaced the title of colonel, tabooed by the patriots as being too aristocratic. These soldiers belonged to a demi-brigade of infantry then stationed at Mayenne. In those days of internal dissensions, the natives of the West called all the republican soldiers Blues. This appellation was due to the first blue and red uniforms, the memory of which is still sufficiently green to make a description of them unnecessary. The detachment of Blues, then, was serving as escort to this assemblage of men, almost all of whom were ill-pleased to be taken to Mayenne, where military discipline was expected to give them the same enthusiasm, the same uni- form, and the uniformity of gait in which they were then so entirely deficient. This column was the contingent obtained with much difficulty from the district of Foug^res and due from that district as its share of the levy of troops ordered by the Executive Directory of the French Republic by a law of the loth Messidor preceding. The government had asked for a hundred millions and a hundred thousand men, in order to send prompt assistance to its armies, then being worsted by the Austrians in Italy, by the Prussians in Germany, and threatened in Switzerland by the Russians, in whom Suvaroff inspired hopes of the conquest of France. The departments of the West, known by the names THE CHOUANS II of Vendee, Bretagne and a portion of Basse Nor- mandie, which had been pacified three years before by the labors of General Hoche, after a war lasting four years, seemed to have seized that moment to recommence the struggle. In the face of all these aggressions the Republic exhibited its former energy. In the first place, it provided for the defence of the departments attacked, by entrusting it to the pa- triotic portion of the inhabitants by one of the articles of the law of Messidor. In short, the gov- ernment, having neither troops nor money to spare for its internal troubles, evaded the difficulty by a legislative gasconade : being unable to send any- thing to the rebellious departments, it gave them its confidence. Perhaps, too, it was hoped that this measure, by arming the citizens against one another, would destroy the active principle of the insurrection. The article in question, which was the cause of disastrous reprisals, was thus conceived : Free com- panies shall be organised in the departments of the West. This impolitic arrangement caused the West to assume such a hostile attitude that the Directory despaired of crushing it at the first blow. And so, a few days later, it asked the Assemblies for spe- cial measures relative to the small contingents of recruits due under the article authorizing the free companies. Therefore a new law, promulgated a few days before the beginning of this narrative, and passed on the third supplementary day of the year VII., ordered that those small levies should be 12 THE CHOUANS organized into legions. The legions were to bear the name of the departments of Sarthe, Orne, Mayenne, Ule-et-Vilaine, Morbihan, Loire Inferieure, and Maine-et-Loire. These legions, said the law, behig orgatii^ed especially to fight the Chouans, cannot be sent to the frontiers on a7iy pretext. These tedious, but little known details explain at once the weak- ness of the Directory's position at that time, and the march of the motley troop of men under escort of the Blues. Perhaps it will not be superfluous to add that these grand and patriotic expressions of the directorial will were never executed any farther than to be inserted in the Bulletin des Lois. Being no longer sustained by high moral ideas, by patriot- ism or by terror, which so recently caused them to be executed instanter, the decrees of the Republic created millions and soldiers, none of which found their way into the Treasury or the army. The mainspring of the Revolution was worn out in un- skilful hands, and the laws received in their applica- tion the impress of circumstances, instead of domi- nating them. The departments of Mayenne and Ule-et-Vilaine were at this time under the command of an old officer who, forming his judgment of the proper measures to take from what he knew of the locality, deter- mined to extort from Bretagne the contingents due under the law, especially that of Foug^res, one of the most redoubtable hotbeds of chouannerie. He hoped in this way to weaken the forces of those threatening districts. The loyal soldier took ad- THE CHOUANS 13 vantage of the illusory provisions of the law to de- clare that he would equip and arm the new recruits immediately, and that he held at their disposal one month's pay of the amount promised by the govern- ment to these exceptional troops. Although Bre- tagne at that time refused to perform any kind of military service, the operation succeeded at first on the faith of these promises, and the response was so prompt that the officer took alarm. But he was one of the old watch-dogs that are not easily taken by surprise. As soon as he saw that part of the contingents were hurrying to the appointed rendez- vous, he suspected that there was some secret mo- tive for their prompt coming together, and perhaps he guessed rightly that they wanted to procure arms. Thereupon, without waiting for the laggards, he took measures to try and ensure his retreat to Alenffon, in order to be nearer to the loyal pro- vinces, although the growing insurrection in that region made the success of his plan very problemat- ical. This officer, who, in accordance with his instruc- tions, maintained the most absolute secrecy as to the ill fortune of our armies and the by no means consoling news from La Vendee, had attempted, on the morning when this tale opens, to reach Mayenne by a forced march, where he proposed to carry out the law according to his own good pleas- ure, by filling the ranks of his demi-brigade with his Breton conscripts. The word conscript, which has since become so famous, had recently for the first 14 THE CHOUANS time taken the place, in the laws, of the term reqiii- sitio7inairc, originally applied to the republican re- cruits. Before leaving Foug^res, the commandant had ordered his troops to supply themselves secretly with cartridges and sufficient rations of bread for the whole party, in order not to attract the attention of the conscripts to the length of the march ; and he did not propose to halt for rest at Ernee, where the men of the contingent, having recovered from their surprise, might put themselves in communica- tion with the Chouans, who were doubtless scattered among the neighboring fields. The gloomy silence that reigned among the recruits, who were surprised by the old republican's manoeuvre, and their slow progress over the mountain, aroused to the highest pitch the suspicion of the demi-brigade commander, one Hulot ; the most salient features of the pre- ceding description possessed a keen interest for him ; and so he marched silently on, surrounded by five young officers, all of whom respected their com- manding officer's preoccupation. But when Hulot reached the crest of La Pelerine, he suddenly turned his head, as if by instinct, to inspect the disturbed countenances of the recruits, and was not slow to break the silence. In fact, the constantly slacken- ing gait of the recruits had already placed a gap of some two hundred yards between them and their escort. Hulot made a grimace which was peculiar to him. " What the devil's the matter with all those fel- lows down there ? " he cried in a ringing voice. THE CHOUANS 1 5 " I should think our conscripts were closing the compasses instead of opening them ! " ' At these words the officers who accompanied him turned about spontaneously, as if aroused from a sleep by a sudden crash. The sergeants and cor- porals imitated them and the company came to a stop without waiting for the long-wished-for word : "Halt!" Although the officers naturally looked back at the detachment which was crawling up La Pelerine like a long turtle, those young men, whom the defence of their country had taken, like so many others, from their professional studies, and in whom war had not yet destroyed the artistic sense, were so struck by the spectacle spread out before them, that they did not reply to a remark whose impor- tance was not known to them. Although they came from Fougeres, where the same picture that they now looked upon was before their eyes, with the variations due to the change of perspective, they could not refrain from casting one last admiring glance upon it, like those dilettanti who take the greater enjoyment in a piece of music because of their acquaintance with its details. From the summit of La Pelerine, the broad valley of Couesnon lies before the eyes of the travellers, one of its culminating points on the horizon being occupied by the town of Fougeres. Its chateau, ^ In familiar language, fermer le compas — to close the com- passes — means to halt, and ouvrir le compas — ^to open the com- passes — means to go forward. l6 THE CHOUANS from the summit of the cliff on which it is built, overlooks three or four important roads, a location which made it formerly one of the keys of Bretagne. From where they stood, the officers could see the whole extent of that great basin, as remarkable for the prodigious fertility of its soil as for its varied aspects. On all sides mountains of schist arise in the shape of an amphitheatre, their reddish sides are hidden beneath forests of oak, and verdant glades lie concealed on their slopes. The cliffs form a vast enclosure, circular in appearance, in whose centre lies a vast, smooth plain laid out like an English garden. The multitude of quickset hedges enclosing numerous small properties of irregular shape, all thickly planted with trees, give to that carpet of verdure an aspect rare among French landscapes, and it contains secrets pregnant with charms in its multiplied contrasts, whose effects are broad enough to reach the most indifferent mind. At that mo- ment, the landscape was enlivened by the fleeting splendor with which nature sometimes delights to enhance the beauty of her imperishable creations. While the detachment was crossing the valley, the rising sun had slowly scattered the fleecy white mists that hover over the fields on a September morning. Just as the soldiers turned their heads, an invisible hand seemed to lift from the landscape the last of the veils in which it had been enveloped, delicate clouds, like the transparent gauze shroud spread over precious stones, through which they arouse our curiosity. In all the vast expanse within THE CHOUANS I7 the officers' range of vision, there was not the slightest semblance of a cloud in the sky, to con- vince one, by the contrast of its silvery whiteness, that that immense blue vault was really the firma- ment. It seemed rather a silken canopy upheld by the irregular mountain peaks, and suspended in the air to shelter that magnificent aggregation of fields, plains, streams and woods. The officers did not weary of gazing upon that landscape so replete with rustic beauties. Some hesitated long before resting their eyes upon the marvellous multiplicity of bosky groves, which the harsh tints of some few yellowing clumps enriched with the hue of bronze, and which were brought into still bolder relief by the emerald-green of the ir- regular meadows. Others revelled in the contrasts presented by the ruddy fields where the buckwheat stood in conical sheaves like the stacks of arms that soldiers make in camp, separated by other fields gilded by the prostrate rows of mown rye. Here and there a sombre slated roof, whence a column of white smoke issued, and the well-defined silvery lines of the tortuous branches of the Couesnon at- tracted the eye by one of those optical illusions which cause the mind to waver and to dream, one knows not why. The balmy freshness of the autumn breeze, the pungent odor of the forest, rose like a cloud of incense and intoxicated those who gazed admiringly upon that beautiful country, who contemplated with delight its unfamiliar flowers, its vigorous vegetation, its verdure which rivals that l8 THE CHOUANS of England, its neighbor, whose name is common to the two countries. The dramatic scene was enliv- ened by some few domestic animals. The birds sang, causing the valley to give forth a sweet, low melody that trembled in the air. If the thoughtful imagination will notice carefully the accidents of light and shade, the misty summits of the mountains, the fanciful shapes that have their birth in spots devoid of trees, or where the waters wind away in graceful, sinuous course ; if the memory colors, so to speak, this sketch that is as fleeting as the moment when it is taken, those persons to whom such pictures are not without attraction will have an im- perfect image of the magic spectacle by which the still impressionable minds of the young officers were in some sort taken by surprise. Reflecting that those poor fellows were regretfully leaving behind their native province and their cherished customs to go to meet their death, per- haps, in foreign lands, they involuntarily forgave them a delay which they understood. With the characteristic generosity of soldiers, they concealed their condescension behind a feigned desire to ex- amine the strategic possibilities of that lovely region. But Hulot, whom we must call the commandant to avoid giving him the awkward title oi chef de demi- brigade was one of those warriors who, when danger is imminent, do not allow themselves to be distracted by the beauties of the landscape, even though it might be the terrestrial paradise. He shook his head therefore and contracted two thick, black eye- THE CHOUANS 19 brows which gave a stern expression to his counte- nance. " Why the devil don't they come on ? " he asked for the second time, in a voice made hoarse by the fatigues of war. " Is there any blessed Virgin in the village that they're shaking hands with ? " " Do you ask why ? " replied a voice. When he heard those v/ords, which sounded like the notes of the horn with which the peasants of those valleys call their flocks together, the com- mandant turned sharply around, as if he had felt the prick of a sword, and saw, within two yards, a more extraordinary individual than any of those he was taking to Mayenne to serve the Republic. He was a thickset, broad-shouldered man, with a head almost as large as a bull's, which it resembled in more ways than one. Thick nostrils made his nose appear even shorter than it was. His heavy lips, parted by teeth as white as snow, his great, round black eyes with menacing lashes, his hanging ears and his red hair were less appropriate to one of our fair Caucasian race than to the genus Herbivora. The entire absence of the other characteristics of sentient man rendered that bare head even more remarkable. The face, bronzed by the sun, and with angular outlines vaguely suggestive of the granite that is the main element of the soil of those regions, was the only visible portion of the strange creature's body. From the neck down, he was en- veloped in a sarrau, a sort of red cotton blouse of even coarser material than that of the trousers of 20 THE CHOUANS the poorest conscripts. This sarrau, in which an antiquary would have recognized the saye — saga — or sayon of the Gauls, came to an end at his middle, where it was attached to two goatskins by pieces of wood, roughly whittled, from some of which the bark had not been removed. The she-goats' skins — to use the local term — in which his legs and thighs were encased, left no semblance of a human form. Enormous clogs concealed his feet. His long greasy hair, not unlike that of his goatskins, fell on each side of his face, separated into two equal parts, like the hair of the statues of the Middle Ages which are still seen in some cathedrals. Instead of the knot- ted clubs which the conscripts carried on their shoulders, he held against his breast, after the manner of a gun, a great whip, whose deftly braided lash seemed to be twice the length of ordinary lashes. The sudden appearance of this strange creature seemed easy to explain. At first glance, some of the officers supposed that the stranger was a recruit or conscript — the words were still used in- terchangeably — who was returning to the column, seeing that it had halted. Nevertheless, the man's appearance strangely disturbed the commandant ; although he did not seem in the least alarmed, his brow became thoughtful, and after eyeing the stranger from head to foot, he repeated mechanic- ally and as if absorbed by gloomy thoughts : " Yes, why don't they come on ? do you know ? " " Because," replied his dark-browed interlocutor THE CHOUANS 21 with an accent that indicated considerable difficulty in speaking the French language, " because there," he said, stretching out his great, rough hand toward Ernee, "there is Maine and there Bretagne ends." With that he stamped heavily on the ground, throwing the heavy handle of his whip at the com- mandant's feet. The impression produced upon the spectators of this scene by the stranger's laconic harangue resembled that which would be produced by a sudden blow upon a tam-tam in the midst of a band. The word harangue is hardly adequate to describe the hatred, the longing for vengeance ex- pressed by a haughty bearing, abrupt speech and features instinct with cool and savage energy. The coarse exterior of the man, who looked as if he had been hewn with an axe, his rough shell, the stupid ignorance written on his features, made him a sort of barbarian demigod. He maintained a prophetic attitude and stood there like the genius of Bre- tagne, rising from a three years' sleep to renew a war in which victory never appeared without double mourning. " There's a pretty head ! " said Hulot to himself. " He looks to me like an ambassador from people who are preparing to parley with musket shots," Muttering thus between his teeth, the command- ant turned his eyes from the man to the landscape, from the landscape to the detachment, from the de- tachment to the steep embankments of the road, shaded at the top by the high broom plant of Bre- tagne ; then he suddenly brought them back to the 22 THE CHOUANS stranger, as if subjecting him to a mute questioning, which he brought to a close by asking him abruptly : " Where do you come from ? " His keen, piercing glance sought to fathom the secrets of that impenetrable face, which, during the interval, had taken on the idiotic, torpid expression of a peasant in repose. " From the country of the Gars," he replied, without apparent embarrassment. " Your name .'* " ' ' Marche-d- Terre. ' ' "Why do you bear your Chouan sobriquet, in spite of the law ? ' ' Marche-a-Terre — we will call him by that name as he claimed it — looked at the commandant with an expression of imbecility so unmistakably genuine, that the commandant thought he could not have understood him. " Are you one of the Fougeres contingent } " Marche-a-Terre answered this question with an / don't know in a hopeless tone that checked all con- versation. He seated himself calmly by the road- side, took from his blouse a few pieces of a thin black buckwheat cake, a national delicacy, the joys of which none but Bretons can appreciate, and began to munch it with stupid indifference. His appear- ance was so indicative of an entire absence of intel- ligence of any sort, that the officers in turn com- pared him as he sat there to one of the animals browsing on the rich pasturage of the valley, to the savages of America or to a native of the Cape of Good THE CHOUANS 23 Hope. Deceived by his attitude, the commandant himself had ceased to listen to his anxious thoughts, when, as he cast one last glance, by way of precau- tion, at the man whom he suspected to be the herald of approaching bloodshed, he saw that his hair, his blouse, his goatskin trousers were covered with thorns, dried leaves, bits of wood and brambles, as if the Chouan had travelled a long way through the underbrush. He glanced significantly at his adjutant Gerard, who was standing near, pressed his hand hard and said in an undertone : " We came out to look for wool and we shall go back shorn." The astonished officers looked at one another in silence. This is a convenient spot for a little digression in- tended to explain and justify Commandant Hulot's apprehensions to certain domestic individuals who are accustomed to doubt everything because they see nothing, and who might deny the existence of Marche-a-Terre and the peasants of the West, whose conduct at this period was sublime. The word gars, pronounced ga, is a relic of the Celtic language. It made its way through the Bas Breton into the French, and the word contains more reminders of ancient times than any other word in our present language. The gais was the principal weapon of the Gaels or Gauls ; gaisde meant armed ; gais, courage ; gas, strength. These instances prove the relationship of the word gars to words found in the language of our ancestors. The word is analo- 24 THE CHOUANS gous to the Latin word vir, man, the root of virtus, strength, courage. This dissertation finds its ex- cuse in its nationality ; and then too, perhaps it will serve to rehabilitate, in the minds of some persons, the words gars, garr,on, garr.omiette , garce, garcette, generally proscribed in polite circles as inelegant, whose origin, however, is most warlike ; they will appear here and there in the course of this narrative. "He's 3i fine garce!" is a little known eulogistic expression which Madame de Stael picked up in a small town of Vendomois where she passed some days of exile. Bretagne is the one spot in all France where Gaelic customs have left the strongest impress. The portions of that province where, even to our days, the wild life and superstitious minds of our uncultured ancestors have remained flagrant, so to speak, are called the country of the Gars. When a district is inhabited by a number of uncivilized crea- tures like those we have introduced in this scene, the country people speak of " the gars of such a parish "; and that classic appellation is a sort of reward for the fidelity with which they strive to preserve the traditions of the Gaelic language and customs : thus their lives retain deep traces of the superstitious beliefs and practices of ancient times. There the feudal customs are still respected. There the anti- quarian finds druidical monuments still standing, and the genius of modern civilization stands aghast at the thought of penetrating immense primeval forests. Incredible ferocity, brutal obstinacy, but unswerving THE CHOUANS 25 fidelity to one's oath ; utter ignorance of our laws, our manners, our costume, our new coins, our lan- guage, but patriarchal simplicity and heroic virtues unite to make the inhabitants of these country dis- tricts poorer in intellectual combinations than the Mohicans and Redskins of North America, but withal as grand, as crafty and as unforgiving. • The place Bretagne occupies in the centre of Europe makes it a much more interesting object of study than Canada. Surrounded by lights, whose beneficent warmth does not reach it, the province resembles a frozen coal that remains cold and dark in the midst of a glowing fire. The efforts made by some great minds to win over that fair section of France, so rich in unknown treasures, to social life and to prosperity ; everything, even the attempts of the government, die in the bosom of an immovable race wedded to the practices of immemorial routine. This deplorable state of affairs may be explained to some extent by the nature of the country, furrowed by ravines, torrents, swamps and lakes, bristling with hedges — a sort of earthwork which makes of every field a citadel — and without roads or canals ; to some extent, too, by the natural tendencies of an ignorant population, enslaved by prejudices whose perils will be made evident by the details of this narrative, and unwilling to have aught to do with modern agricultural methods. The picturesque natural disposition of the country and the supersti- tion of the people exclude all possibility of the asso- ciation of individuals and the advantages to be 26 THE CHOUANS derived from the comparison and exchange of ideas. There are no villages. The precarious structures that they call houses are scattered over the country. Each family lives in its own house as in a desert. The only known gatherings are the ephemeral ones at the parish church on Sundays and holy days. Those silent gatherings, dominated by the rector, the only master of those coarse minds, last only a few hours. After listening to the terrible voice of the priest, the peasant returns for another week to his unhealthy abode ; he goes forth to work, he re- turns there to sleep. If he has a visitor, it is the priest — the soul of the whole countryside. Thus, it was in obedience to the voice of the priest that thousands of men hurled themselves upon the Re- public, and that those portions of Bretagne, five years before the time at which this story begins, supplied great numbers of soldiers to the first chouannerie. The brothers Cottereau, bold smug- glers who gave their name to that war, carried on their perilous trade from Laval to Foug^res. But there was nothing noble in the insurrections of those districts, and it can be said with assurance that, whereas La Vendee turned brigandage into war, Bretagne turned war into brigandage. The banish- ment of the princes, the overthrow of the religion, were to the Chouans nothing more than pretexts for pillage, and the events of that internecine struggle contracted something of the rough savagery of the local customs. When true defenders of the mon- archy came to recruit soldiers among that ignorant THE CHOUANS 27 and warlike people, they tried, but in vain, to im- part under the white flag, some semblance of gran- deur to the enterprises that had made the Chouan method of warfare odious, and the Chouans remained as a memorable example of the danger of exciting the half-civilized masses of a province. The picture of the first valley presented by Bre- tagne to the traveller's eyes, the description of the men who composed the detachment of recruits, the portrait of the gars who appeared on the crest of La Pelerine give a brief but faithful representation of the country and its people. A trained imagination can, from these details, — picture to itself the stage and the instruments of the conflict ; its elements were there. The flowering hedges in those lovely valleys concealed invisible assailants. Every field was a fortress, every tree masked a pitfall, every old hollow willow trunk guarded a ruse. The field of battle was everywhere. Guns lay in wait at every corner for the Blues whom smiling young girls enticed within range of the firearms, with no thought that their conduct was treacherous ; they went on pilgrimages with their fathers and brothers to learn new wiles and to receive absolution from wayside Virgins made of rotten wood. Religion, or rather the fetich-worship of those ignorant creatures, left them without remorse for murder done. So it was that, when the struggle was once begun, every- thing in the province became a source of danger, noise as well as silence, joy as well as fear, the domestic fireside as well as the highroad. There 28 THE CHOUANS was deep conviction in these acts of treachery. They were savages serving God and the king in the way that the Mohicans make war. But, to render the description of that conflict accurate and true at every point, the historian must add that the instant that the treaty negotiated by Hoche was signed, the whole region was friendly and laughing once more. Families, whose members were tearing one another to pieces the day before, supped safely under the same roof on the morrow. « The instant that Hulot detected the secret treach- ery betrayed by the condition of Marche-a-Terre's goatskin garments, he knew that the end had come of the blessed peace due to the genius of Hoche, the continuance of which seemed to him impossible. So war was to break forth again, more horrible doubt- less than before, after a period of inaction lasting three years. The Revolution had grown milder since the 9th Thermidor, but perhaps it was about to resume the terrifying characteristics that had made it odious to all just minds. English gold had, as always, fomented the discords of France. The Republic, abandoned by young Bonaparte, who seemed to be its tutelary genius, was apparently in no condition to resist so many foes, and the most cruel of all was the last to appear. Civil war, por- tended by innumerable partial uprisings, assumed an entirely new and grave phase when the Chouans conceived the plan of attacking such a strong escort. Such were the reflections that passed through Hulot's mind, although much less succinctly, as soon as he thought that he detected, in the appearance of (29) 30 THE CHOUANS Marche-a-Terre, an indication of a skilfully prepared ambuscade, for, at first, he alone realized his danger. The silence that followed the commandant's pro- phetic remark to Gerard, with which the preceding scene closed, gave Hulot time to recover his self- possession. The old soldier had almost staggered. He could not drive away the clouds that darkened his forehead when he thought that he was already surrounded by the horrors of a war, whose atrocities would perhaps put cannibal tribes to shame. Cap- tain Merle and Adjutant Gerard, his two friends, sought an explanation for the dread — a novel sight to them — depicted on their chief's face, and looked from him to Marche-a-Terre, who sat munching his cake by the roadside, without succeeding in estab- lishing the slightest connection between that species of animal and their intrepid leader's anxiety. But Hulot's face soon grew brighter. While deploring the misfortunes of the Republic, he rejoiced that he had to fight for her, he gladly made an inward vow that he would not be fooled by the Chouans, and that he would fathom the secret of the mysterious and crafty man they did him the honor to employ against him. Before forming any decision, he set about examining the locality in which his enemies proposed to surprise him. When he saw that the road they were then following passed through a sort of gorge, not very deep, in truth, but flanked by dense woods from which several paths led into the road, he drew his great black eyebrows together and THE CHOUANS 31 said to his two friends in a low voice trembling with excitement : " We've fallen into a fine hornet's nest ! " "What is it you're afraid of, pray?" asked Gerard. " Afraid ? " echoed the commandant ; *' yes, afraid. I have always been afraid of being shot like a dog on the edge of a wood, without even the warning of a qui vive ? " " Bah ! " said Merle with a laugh. " Qui vive ? is a great mistake." "Are we really in danger?" asked Gerard, as surprised by Hulot's sang-froid as he had been by his momentary panic. "Hush!" said the commandant, "we're in the wolf's jaws, it's as dark there as it is in an oven and we must strike a light. Luckily," he added, "we hold the crest of this hill ! " He embellished his remark with an energetic epithet and continued : " Perhaps I shall see my way finally." The commandant, leading the two officers to the side of the road, surrounded Marche-a-Terre ; the gars pretended to think that he was in their way and promptly rose to his feet. "Stay there, vagabond!" cried Hulot, pushing him back on the bank where he had been sitting. From that moment the commandant did not cease to watch the heedless Breton closely. "My friends," he went on, addressing the two officers in an undertone, "it is time to tell you that 32 THE CHOUANS the shop has been broken into over yonder. The Directory, as the result of a row in the Assemblies, has used its broom on our affairs once more. Those pentarchs, or rather pantins ' — it is better in French — of directors have lost a trusty blade. Bernadotte will have nothing more to do with them." " Who takes his place ? " asked Gerard eagerly. " Milet-Mureau, an old graybeard. They select a very bad time to let tongues govern ! English broadsides are pouring in on us from all directions. All these cockchafers of Vendeans and Chouans are in the air, and they who are working the pup- pets knew enough to seize the moment when we are going to the wall." " How so ? " said Merle. " Our armies are beaten everywhere," rejoined Hulot, lowering his voice more and more. "The Chouans have already intercepted the couriers twice, and I received my despatches and the last decrees only because they were sent me by special messenger by Bernadotte just as he was leaving the ministry. Luckily some of my friends have written me confidentially about the commotion. Fouche has discovered that the tyrant Louis XVIIL has been advised by traitors in Paris to send a leader to his ducks in the interior. They think that Barras is false to the Republic. In short, Pitt and the princes have sent hither an ex-noble, an energetic, talented ^Tentarch, member of a pentarchy or government of five ; the Directory was composed of five members ; pantin, some- what similar in pronunciation, means jumping-jack. THE CHOUANS 33 fellow, whose object it is to knock the cap off the Republic's head by uniting the efforts of the Ven- deans with those of the Chouans. My gentleman has landed in Morbihan, 1 was the first to find it out and 1 sent word to the rascals in Paris ; the Gars is the name he has taken. All such beasts as that," he said, pointing to Marche-a-Terre, " burden them- selves with names that would give a true patriot the colic if he had to bear them. Now our man is in this region. That Chouan's arrival — " and he pointed again to Marche-a-Terre — "tells me that he's on our backs. But you can't teach an old monkey to make faces, and you must help me to whistle my linnets back into the cage, and in a hurry too ! I should be a pretty duffer, if I allowed myself to be snared like a rook by this ci-devant, who comes from London on the pretext of having to dust our hats ! " Upon learning these secret and critical circum- stances, the two officers, knowing that their leader never took alarm without cause, assumed the grave expression that a soldier's face wears when danger is most pressing, if he be of stern temper and ac- customed to go to the bottom of affairs. Gerard, whose rank, since suppressed, brought him near his leader, attempted to make some reply and to ask for all the political news, some of which was evidently withheld, but a gesture from Hulot imposed silence upon him ; and all three renewed their observation of Marche-a-Terre. The Chouan did not give the least indication of emotion at finding himself under 3 34 THE CHOUANS the watchful eyes of men as formidable by reason of their intelligence as by reason of their bodily strength. The curiosity of the two officers, to whom this sort of warfare was a novelty, was roused to a high pitch by the beginning of an affair that pre- sented an almost romantic interest, and they at- tempted to joke about it ; but at the first word that escaped their lips, Hulot looked at them gravely and said : " God in heaven ! we mustn't smoke over the powder barrel, citizens. To be brave out of season is like the amusement of carrying water in a basket. Gerard," he said in the adjutant's ear, "draw near to yonder brigand gradually and be ready to run your sword through his body at the slightest suspicious movement on his part. For my own part, 1 propose to take measures to carry on the conversation, if our unknown enemies choose to begin it." Gerard bent his head slightly in token of obedi- ence, then began to contemplate the different as- pects of the valley, with which we are sufficiently familiar ; he seemed to wish to examine them more closely and stepped backward, as if unconsciously ; but it is certain that the landscape was the last thing of which he took notice. For his part, Marche-a-Terre made no sign to indicate that the officer's manoeuvre involved him in any danger ; from the way he played with the end of his whip, you would have said he was fishing with pole and line in the ditch. THE CHOUANS 35 While Gerard was trying thus to take up a posi- tion in front of the Chouan, the commandant said in an undertone to Merle : " Give a sergeant ten picked men, and go yourself and station them above us, at the point on the top of the hill where the road widens, forming a plateau, and from which you can see a good strip of the Ernee road. Select a place where the road isn't bordered with woods and from which the sergeant can keep an eye on the fields. Call Clef-des-Coeurs, he's a bright fellow. — There's nothing to laugh at, I wouldn't give two sous for our skins if we don't take our own time." While Captain Merle was carrying out this order with a promptness of which he understood the im- portance, the commander waved his right hand to enjoin silence on the soldiers who surrounded him and who were talking and laughing. With another gesture, he ordered them to resume their weapons. When silence was established he looked from one side of the road to the other, listening with anxious intentness, as if he hoped to hear some stifled sound, the clash of arms or footsteps precursory of the expected struggle. His piercing black eyes seemed to probe the forest to an extraordinary distance ; but, finding nothing there, he consulted the sand of the road, after the manner of savages, trying to discover some traces of the invisible foes of whose audacity he was well aware. Abandoning the hope of discovering anything to justify his fears, he went to the side of the road, climbed the low 36 THE CHOUANS slopes with difificulty and walked slowly along the top. Suddenly he realized how necessary his ex- perience was to the welfare of his command, and he went down again. His face became darker than ever ; for, in those days, the leaders always re- gretted that they could not reserve the most peril- ous tasks for themselves alone. The other officers and the common soldiers, having noticed the preoc- cupation of a chief whose character they admired and whose worth was well known to them, con- cluded that his extreme solicitude denoted impending danger ; but being incapable of suspecting its gravity, they stood like statues and almost held their breath instinctively. Like those dogs who try to divine the purpose of a skilful sportsman whose orders are incomprehensible to them, but who obey none the less promptly, the soldiers looked alter- nately at the valley of Couesnon, the woods along the road and the stern face of their commandant, trying to read their fate therein. They consulted one another with their eyes, and more than once a smile passed from mouth to mouth. When Hulot made his grimace, Beau-Pied, a young sergeant who was considered the wit of the company, said in an undertone : " In the devil's name, what sort of a mess are we in, that that old trooper of a Hulot should have such a sour face ? He looks as if he were before a court-martial ! " Hulot having glanced sternly at Beau-Pied, the silence required of troops under arms reigned THE CHOUANS 37 supreme. Amid that solemn silence could be heard the lagging steps of the conscripts, whose feet rose and fell upon the gravel with a dull, regular, crunch- ing sound, that added an uncertain element of emo- tion to the general anxiety. This indefinable feel- ing will be understood only by those who, when suffering from the agony of suspense, have felt the wild beating of their hearts, in the silence of the night, increased tenfold by some noise whose monot- onous repetition seemed to pour terror into their hearts drop by drop. Resuming his position in the middle of the road, the commandant began to ask himself the question : " Have 1 made a mistake ? " He gazed with concentrated wrath that shot in lightning flashes from his eyes, at the tranquil and stupid Marche-a-Terre ; but the savage irony which he could detect in the Chouan's listless glance, per- suaded him to continue his precautionary measures. At that moment Captain Merle, having executed Hulot's orders, returned to his side. The silent actors in this scene, the type of innumerable others which made this the most dramatic of all wars, im- patiently awaited fresh developments, anxious to have the obscure points of their military situation cleared up by other manoeuvres. "We did well, captain," said the commandant, "to station the small number of patriots included among the recruits at the rear of the detachment. Take a dozen more good fellows, with sub-lieutenant Lebrun at their head, and lead them quickly to the rear ; they will support the patriots who are already 189931 38 THE CHOUANS there, and will push the whole of yonder flock of birds forward, — at a good pace, too, — so as to bring them up, at double quick, to the high ground occu- pied by our men. I await you." The captain disappeared in the midst of the troop. The commandant glanced at four men, one after an- other, whose intrepidity, address and activity were known to him ; he called them silently, by pointing his finger at them, one by one, and making the friendly sign which consists in bringing the fore- finger toward the nose with a quick movement several times repeated ; they obeyed his sum- mons. "You served with me under Hoche," he said to them, " when we brought those brigands who called themselves the Khig's Chasseurs to their senses ; you know how they hid to decoy the Blues ! " At this implied eulogy of their shrewdness, the four soldiers nodded their heads with a significant wink. Their faces were of that heroic martial cast, whose expression of careless resignation showed that, since the beginning of the conflict between France and Europe, their ideas had not gone behind their cartridge cases, or ahead of their bayonets. With their lips pressed together like a purse when the cords are drawn tight, they looked at their leader with an attentive and interested air. " Very good," continued Hulot, who possessed in an eminent degree the art of speaking the pictur- esque language of the soldiers, "such sharp rabbits as we are mustn't let Chouans fool us, and there THE CHOUANS 39 are Chouans here or my name's not Hulot. I want you four to beat up the woods on the sides of the road. Those fellows behind are going to spin out the march. So, follow close, try not to be caught off guard, and show me what there is in those woods, quick ! " Then he pointed out to them the dangerous ridges overlooking the road. All, by way of thanking him, carried the back of the hand to their old three- cornered hats, whose high brims, battered by the rain and made limp by long use, were falling over on the crown. One of them, named Larose, a cor- poral well known to Hulot, tapped his gun-barrel and said : "We'll whistle a little tune on the clarinet for them, commandant," They started off, two on the right, two on the left. Not without some secret emotion did their companions watch them disappear on the sides of the road. Their anxiety was shared by the com- mandant, who believed that he had sent them to certain death. He shuddered involuntarily when he could no longer see the tops of their hats. Officers and men listened to the gradually lessening noise of their footsteps on the dry leaves with a feeling that was all the keener from being carefully con- cealed. In war time, scenes constantly occur where the endangering of four men's lives causes more dis- may than the thousands of dead left on the field of Jemmapes. Soldiers' faces wear such a multiplicity of expressions, and all so fleeting, that those who paint 40 THE CHOUANS them are obliged to appeal to the memories of those who have been soldiers, and leave pacific minds to study the dramatic features, for such tempests of emotion, abounding In details, cannot be fully de- scribed except at interminable length. Just as the bayonets of the four soldiers ceased to gleam through the bushes, Captain Merle returned, having carried out the commandant's order with lightning-like rapidity. Thereupon Hulot, with two or three orders in quick succession, drew up the rest of his troop in battle array in the middle of the road ; then he ordered a forward movement to the summit of La Pelerine, where his little vanguard was sta- tioned ; but he himself marched last, walking back- ward, in order to observe the slightest change that might take place at any point in the landscape, which nature had made so charming and which man made so terrible. He reached the spot where Gerard was watching Marche-a-Terre, just as the latter, who had followed with an apparently indif- ferent eye all the commandant's manoeuvres, but was then watching with incredible keenness the two soldiers in the woods on the right side of the road, whistled three or four times in such a way as to produce the clear, piercing note of the screech-owl. The three celebrated smugglers whose names have already been mentioned made use of certain varia- tions of that cry at night, to warn one another of ambuscades, of impending danger and of anything that was of interest to them. Thence their sobri- quet of chuin, which means screech-owl or gray-owl THE CHOUANS 41 in the patois of tiie province. That corrupted word was used to designate the men who, in the first war, imitated the tactics and the signals of the three brothers. When he heard that suspicious whistling, the commandant halted and gazed fixedly at Marche- a-Terre. He pretended to be deceived by the Chouan's idiotic manner, in order to keep him at hand like a barometer to indicate the movements of the enemy. Therefore he stayed Gerard's hand as he was preparing to dispatch the Chouan. Then he stationed two soldiers a few steps away from the spy, and in a loud, distinct voice, ordered them to stand ready to shoot him at the least sign that should escape him. Despite his imminent danger, Marche-a-Terre seemed to feel no emotion, and the commandant, who was studying him closely, noticed his insensibility. " The greenhorn doesn't know much ! " he said to Gerard. "Ha! ha I it isn't easy to read a Chouan's face ; but this fellow betrayed himself by his anxiety to show his courage. Look you, Gerard, if he had feigned terror I should have taken him for a fool. He and I would have been a pair. I was at the end of my string. Oh ! we shall be attacked ! But let them come ! I am ready now." Having uttered these words in a low tone and with a triumphant air, the old soldier rubbed his hands and glanced at Marche-a-Terre with a cunning expression ; then he folded his arms across his breast, stood in the rriiddle of the road between his two favorite officers and awaited the result of his 42 THE CHOUANS dispositions. Sure of the battle, he looked calmly at his soldiers. " Oh ! there's going to be a shindy, the comman- dant just rubbed his hands," said Beau-Pied in a low tone. The critical situation of Commandant Hulot and his detachment was one of those where it is so certain that lives are at stake, that men of spirit make it a point of honor to exhibit great calmness and self-posses- sion. At such times men judge themselves as a court of last resort. Thus the commandant, being better aware of the danger than his two officers, staked his pride upon appearing to be the most tranquil of the party. Resting his eyes upon Marche-a-Terre, upon the road and upon the woods, one after another, he awaited, not without agonizing suspense, the report of the general discharge of the Chouans, whom he believed to be hiding, like hobgoblins, all about him ; but his face remained impassive. When the eyes of all the soldiers were fastened upon his, he wrin- kled slightly his dark, pockmarked cheeks, drew back his upper lip and winked, a grimace always taken for a smile by his soldiers ; then he brought his hand down upon Gerard's shoulder, saying : " Now, we have quieted down again ; what were you going to say to me just now ? " " What new crisis is approaching, comman- dant .? " " It's nothing very new," he replied in an under- tone. " All Europe is against us and this time they have a fine chance. While the Directors are fight- THE CHOUANS 43 ing among themselves like horses without hay in a stable, and everything is falling to pieces in their government, they leave the armies without rein- forcements. We are crushed in Italy ! Yes, my friends, we have evacuated Mantua as a result of the disaster of Trebia, and Joubert has lost the battle of Novi. I trust that Massena will hold the moun- tain passes of Switzerland, which are threatened by Suvaroff. Our cause is hopeless on the Rhine. The Directory has sent Moreau there. Can that fellow defend a frontier ? — I wish he could, but the coalition will end by trampling on us, and, as ill-luck would have it, the only general who could save us has gone to the devil down yonder, in Egypt ! How could he come back^ moreover ? England is mis- tress of the sea." " Bonaparte's absence doesn't disturb me, com- mandant," replied the young adjutant Gerard, in whom careful education had developed a superior mind. "Will our Revolution come to a standstill ? Ah ! it is our duty to do something more than defend the French territory, we have a double mission. Should we not also preserve the soul of the country, the noble principles of liberty and independence, the light of human reason, kindled by our Assemblies, which I hope will spread gradually over the world ? France is like a traveller entrusted with a light, which she carries in one hand while she defends her- self with the other ; if your news is true, never within ten years have we been surrounded by more people who are trying to blow it out. Doctrines 44 THE CHOUANS and country, everything is at the point of extinc- tion." "Alas, yes!" said Commandant Hulot with a sigh. " Those clowns of Directors have succeeded in getting into hot water with every man who could steer the ship skilfully. Bernadotte, Carnot, every- body, even to citizen Talleyrand, has left us. In short, there is only a single good patriot left, friend Fouche, who has everything in his hands through the police ; there's a man for you ! It was he who gave me timely warning of this insurrection. How- ever, we're caught in some sort of trap here, I'm sure of it." " Oh ! if the army doesn't take a hand in our gov- ernment," said Gerard, "the lawyers will put us in a worse fix than we were in before the Revolution. As if those poor fools knew how to command ! " "I'm always afraid," rejoined Hulot, "that I shall hear they are negotiating with the Bourbons. Great God ! if they should reach an understanding with them, what a pickle we fellows here should be in!" " No, no, commandant, we shan't come to that," said Gerard. "The army, as you say, will raise its voice, and provided that it doesn't take its words from Pichegru's vocabulary, I trust that we shall not be hacked to pieces for ten years, just to grow cotton and see others spin it." "Yes, indeed," cried the commandant, "it has cost us terribly dear to change our costume." " Very good," said Captain Merle, " let us con- THE CHOUANS . 45 tinue to act the part of good patriots here, and try to prevent our Chouans from having any communi- cation with La Vendee ; for if they do come together and England takes a hand in it, why, this time I wouldn't answer for the cap of the Republic, One and Indivisible." At that point the conversation was interrupted by the cry of the screech-owl apparently some distance away. The commandant, more disturbed than ever, looked once more at Marche-a-Terre, whose impas- sive face gave, so to speak, no sign of life. The conscripts, urged forward by an officer, were huddled together like a herd of cattle in the middle of the road, some thirty paces from the company drawn up in order of battle. About ten paces behind them were the soldiers and the patriots commanded by Lieutenant Lebrun. The commandant cast his eyes over his order of battle and gave one last glance at the picket stationed in advance of his position. Satisfied with the disposition of his forces, he was on the point of turning to give the order to march, when he spied the tricolored cockades of two sol- diers returning, after searching the woods on the left side of the road. As he saw nothing of the two scouts on the other side, the commandant deter- mined to await their return. " Perhaps that's where the bomb will burst," he said to his two officers, pointing to the woods in which his two lost children had buried themselves. While the two skirmishers were making some- thing in the nature of a report to him, Hulot took 46 THE CHOUANS his eyes from Marche-a-Terre. The Chouan there- upon began to whistle vigorously in such a way as to make the sound carry a tremendous distance ; then, before any of those who were watching him could take aim at him, he struck them a blow with his whip that threw them down on the bank. In- stantly the republicans were surprised by an out- burst of wild shrieks or rather howls. A terrible discharge of musketry from the wood on the crest of the bank where the Chouan had been sitting, struck down seven or eight soldiers. Marche-a-Terre, at whom five or six men fired without hitting him, dis- appeared in the woods after clambering up the slope with the rapidity of a wild cat ; his wooden shoes rolled into the ditch, and every one could see upon his feet the heavy hobnailed shoes usually worn by the King's Chasseurs. At the first yell uttered by the Chouans, all the conscripts leaped into the woods at the right, like a flock of birds flying away at the approach of a traveller. " Fire on those hounds ! " cried the commandant. The company fired on them, but the conscripts had succeeded in getting out of reach of the fusillade by jumping behind trees, and before the guns could be reloaded, they had disappeared. " Pass decrees for the organization of depart- mental legions, eh ? " said Hulot to Gerard. " One must be a donkey like a director to think of relying on a conscription in this province. The Assemblies would do better not to vote us so much money and clothes and supplies, but give us a little." THE CHOUANS 47 " The rascals like their cakes better than hard tack," said Beau-Pied, the wag of the company. At his words the deserters were assailed with hooting and loud laughter from the little troop of republicans, but suddenly they became silent once more. They saw the two men the commandant had sent to beat up the woods on the right creeping painfully down the embankment. The less severely wounded of the two supported his comrade, whose blood drenched the ground. The poor fellows were about half-way down when Marche-a-Terre showed his hideous face ; he took such true aim at the two Blues that he finished them at a single shot and they rolled heavily into the ditch. No sooner did his great head appear than thirty muskets were raised ; but, like a phantom figure, he disappeared behind the fatal tufts of broom. These events, which so many words are required to describe, took place in a moment ; in another moment the patriots and the soldiers of the rear guard joined the rest of the escort. " Forward ! " cried Hulot. The company pushed rapidly forward to the higher, open ground where the picket had been stationed. There the commandant drew up the company in battle order ; but he saw no indications of a hostile demonstration on the part of the Chou- ans and concluded that the only purpose of the am- buscade was to set free the conscripts. "Their yells," he said to his two friends, " in- dicate to my mind that they are not in force. Let 48 THE CHOUANS us go forward at the double-quick and we may reach Ernee without having them on our backs." His words were overheard by a patriot conscript, who left the ranks and walked to where Hulot stood. "General," he said, "I've fought against the Chouans before. May I have two words with you ? " " He's a lawyer, they always believe themselves in court," the commandant whispered to Merle. — " Go on with your argument," he said to the young Fougerais. " Commandant, the Chouans have brought arms for the m.en they've just taken as recruits, there's no doubt of that. Now, if we show 'em our heels, they'll wait for us at every turn in the road and kill us to a man before we get to Ernee. We must argue, as you say, but with cartridges. During the skirmish, which will last longer than you think, one of my comrades will go and bring up the National Guard and free companies from Foug^res. Although we're only conscripts, you'll see then if we belong to the race of crows." " Then you think the Chouans are numerous .-* '* " Judge for yourself, citizen commandant ! " He led Hulot to a part of the plateau from which the sand had been removed as if with a rake ; then, after calling his attention to that fact, he led him some distance into a path where they saw marks of the passage of a large number of men. The leaves were trodden into the ground. " Those are the Gars from Vitre," said the Fou- ON LA PELERINE The Choiian thereiipori began to tvhistle vigorously in snch a way as to make the sound carry a ireinen- dons distance ; then, before any of those %vho ivcre watcliing him could take aim at him, he struck them a bloiv ivith his zvhip that threw them doiun on the bank. -$„^,yA^J,r,-J an A, ■$ ^ / /».^ THE CHOUANS 49 gerais ; "they are on their way to join the Bas Nor- mands." " What's your name, citizen ? " queried Hulot. " Gudin, commandant." " Well, Gudin, 1 make you corporal of your bour- geois. You look to me like a staunch fellow. I leave it to you to select one of your comrades to be sent to Fougeres. You will stay beside me. First of all, go with your men and pick up the guns, car- tridge cases and uniforms of our poor fellows whom these brigands shot down. We won't stay here to eat musket-balls without returning them." The intrepid Fougerais went back to collect the property of the dead men, and the whole company covered them by a well-sustained fire on the woods, so that they succeeded in stripping the bodies with- out losing a man. "These Bretons," said Hulot to Gerard, "will make famous foot soldiers if they will ever learn to mess together." Gudin's messenger started off on the run by a winding path through the woods on the left. The soldiers inspected their weapons and made ready for the combat ; the commandant passed them in review, smiled upon them, took his place two paces in front with his two favorite officers and daunt- lessly awaited the attack of the Chouans. For a moment silence reigned once more, but it was not of long duration. Three hundred Chouans, whose costumes were identical with those of the conscripts, debouched from the woods at the right and came 4 50 THE CHOUANS forward in a disorderly mass, uttering veritable howls, and filled the whole road in front of the weak battalion of Blues. The commandant arranged his troops in two equal bodies, each presenting a front of ten men. He placed between the two his twelve recruits equipped in hot haste, and took his station at their head. The little army was protected by two wings of twenty-five men each, who manoeuvred on the two sides of the road under the orders of Gerard and Merle. Those two officers were to take the Chouans in flank and prevent their spreading out — s'egailler. — That word in the patois of those countries refers to the practice of scattering over the fields, where every peasant would take up a position from which he could fire on the Blues with- out danger ; when that happened, the republican armies were at a loss how to come at their enemies. These dispositions, ordered by the commandant with the rapidity demanded by the emergency, in- spired the soldiers with his confidence, and they all marched silently forward upon the Chouans. After the few seconds consumed by the two bodies in ap- proaching each other, there was a point-blank dis- charge which spread death through the ranks of both. At that moment the two republican wings, to which the Chouans were unable to offer any resistance, fell upon their flanks, and by a hot, well- directed fire, sowed death and confusion among their enemies. This manoeuvre made the two parties almost equal numerically. But the Chouan charac- ter was notable for an intrepidity and constancy THE CHOUANS 5 1 that would stand any test ; they did not give way, their losses did not make them waver, they closed up and tried to surround the small, dark, compact troop of Blues, which covered so little ground that it resembled a queen bee in the midst of a swarm. Thereupon ensued one of those ghastly combats in which the rattle of musketry is rarely heard, but is replaced by the clashing of side arms in hand-to- hand struggles, and in which numbers turn the scale where courage is equal on both sides. The Chouans would have carried the day at the first onset, had not the two wings commanded by Merle and Gerard succeeded in giving them two or three volleys diag- onally across their lines. The Blues in those two wings should have held their positions and continued to bring down their formidable adversaries by their skilful marksmanship ; but, being roused to frenzy by the sight of the danger hanging over the heroic band of soldiers then completely surrounded by the King's Chasseurs, they rushed into the crowd like madmen, with fixed bayonets, and made the struggle more equal for some moments. The two troops thereupon fell upon each other with savage ferocity, sharpened by the frenzy and cruelty of party spirit, which made that war so exceptional. Every one, mindful of his own danger, became silent. The scene was as chilling and sombre as death. Amid the silence of tongues, through the clashing of weapons and the grinding of the gravel under their feet, naught could be heard save the muttered groans and exclamations of those who fell, griev- 52 THE CHOUANS ously wounded or dying. In the centre of the re- publican force, the twelve recruits defended the com- mandant with such heroic courage as he gave ad- vice and issued order upon order, that some soldiers shouted more than once : " Bravo, recruits ! " Hulot, with unmoved countenance and his eye upon everything, soon noticed among the Chouans a man surrounded by a picked guard, who seemed to be their leader. It seemed to him most essential that he should have a good look at the officer ; but he made several vain attempts to distinguish his features, which were constantly hidden from him by the red caps and broad-brimmed hats. But he did distinguish Marche-a-Terre, who stood beside his chief repeating his orders in a hoarse voice, his carbine being never idle. The commandant lost patience at his repeated failures. He waved his sword above his head, encouraged his recruits, and charged the centre of the Chouans with such fury that he cut through their lines to a point where he could see the leader, whose face unfortunately was completely hidden by a large felt hat with a white cockade. But the unknown, taken aback by such an audacious attack, recoiled and raised his hat with an abrupt movement, and thereupon Hulot was able to make a hasty mental sketch of his person. The young officer, whom Hulot took to be not more than twenty-five years old, wore a green cloth hunting jacket. There were pistols in his white belt. His heavy shoes were studded with nails like those of THE CHOUANS 53 the Chouans. Hunting gaiters reaching to the knees and fitted to breeches of very coarse ticking completed his costume, which enveloped a slender and well set up figure of medium height. Enraged to find the Blues within reach of his person, he lowered his hat and rushed toward them ; but he was speedily surrounded by Marche-a-Terre and some terrified Chouans. Hulot thought that he saw, as he looked between the heads that crowded about the young man, a broad red ribbon upon a half-open jacket. The commandant's eyes, attracted first of all by that royal decoration, which was at that time completely forgotten, suddenly fell upon a face which he soon lost sight of, being compelled by the exigencies of the battle to look after the welfare and the evolutions of his little troop. So it was that he hardly caught a glimpse of a pair of gleaming eyes whose color escaped him, fair hair, and refined features bronzed by the sun. He was impressed, however, by the resplendent whiteness of a bare neck, set off by a black cravat, tied carelessly in a loose knot. The spirited, energetic manner of the young officer was soldierly after the manner of those who demand a certain amount of conventional ro- mance in a battle. His well-gloved hand waved in the air a sword that gleamed in the sun. His coun- tenance denoted at once refinement and force. His conscientious exaltation, heightened by the charms of youth and by distinguished manners, made the emigre a delectable image of the French nobility. His appearance was in striking contrast to Hulot's, 54 THE CHOUANS who, not four paces away, presented a living image of the energetic Republic for which the old soldier was fighting ; while his stern face, his blue uniform with worn red lapels, the blackened epaulets hang- ing behind his shoulders, well depicted his character and his aspirations. The young man's graceful attitude and expression did not escape Hulot, who cried, as he struggled to reach him : " Come on, you ballet-dancer, come on and let me demolish you ! " The royalist leader, angered by this momentary disadvantage, started forward with a desperate rush ; but when his people saw him risking his life thus, they all threw themselves upon the Blues. Sudden- ly a sweet, clear voice rang out above the uproar of the battle : " This way. Saint Lescure is dead ! Won't you avenge him ? " At those magic words, the onslaught of the Chouans became terrific, and the republican soldiers had great difficulty in holding their ground without breaking their order of battle. " If that wasn't a young man," said Hulot to him- self, falling back foot by foot, "we shouldn't have been attacked. Did anyone ever see Chouans offer battle ? But so much the better, they won't kill us like dogs along the road." He raised his voice until the woods rang again : " Forward, quickly now, my comrades ! Are we going to be made fools of by brigands ? " THE CHOUANS 55 The verb which we substitute for the one the com- mandant actually used is but a feeble equivalent ; but veterans will be able to supply the genuine one, which certainly is more to the military taste. "Gerard, Merle," continued the commandant, " recall your men, form them in a battalion, re-form in the rear, fire on the dogs and make an end of them ! " Hulot's order was executed with difficulty ; for, when he heard his adversary's voice, the young leader cried : " By Sainte Anne d'Auray, don't let them escape ! Spread out, my Gars!" When the two wings commanded by Gerard and Merle withdrew from the general melee, each of the little battalions was followed by a persistent body of Chouans much superior in numbers. The old goat- skins surrounded Merle's and Gerard's men on all sides, setting up afresh their blood-curdling cries, which resembled the howling of wild beasts. " Hold your tongues, messieurs, we can't hear one another kill ! " cried Beau-Pied. This jest revived the courage of the Blues. In- stead of concentrating their efforts on a single point, the Republicans defended themselves at three differ- ent points on the plateau of La Pelerine, and the roar of the musketry awoke all the echoes of those valleys but now so calm and peaceful. The victory might have remained undecided for hours to come, or the struggle have come to an end for lack of combatants. Blues and Chouans displayed equal 56 THE CHOUANS courage. The frenzy of both parties was increasing from moment to moment, when, in the distance, the faint beating of a drum was heard ; and judging from its direction, the body of men whose approach it indicated seemed to be crossing the valley of Couesnon. "It's the National Guard of Foug^res ! " cried Gudin in a loud voice ; " Vannier must have met them." At this exclamation, which reached the ear of the young leader of the Chouans and his ferocious aide- de-camp, the Royalists made a backward movement, soon checked by a bestial yell from Marche-a-Terre. In obedience to two or three orders issued in under- tones by the leader and transmitted by Marche-a- Terre to the Chouans in Bas Breton, they effected their retreat with a degree of skill that disconcerted the Republicans and their commandant. The sturdiest of the Chouans drew up in the first rank, presenting a respectable front, behind which the wounded and the rest of their force withdrew to load their guns. Suddenly, with the agility of which Marche-a-Terre had already furnished an example, the wounded clambered up to the crest of the bank that flanked the road on the right, and were followed by half of the Chouans, who climbed it rapidly to take possession of the ridge, showing the Blues nothing but their active heads above the bushes. There they made a rampart of the trees, and di- rected their fire on what remained of the escort, who, in obedience to Hulot's repeated orders, had THE CHOUANS 57 rapidly formed in line, in order to present a front on the road of equal strength to that of the Chouans. The latter fell back slowly, contesting every inch and wheeling in such a way as to be protected by the fire of their comrades. When they reached the ditch by the roadside they too climbed the high bank, whose crest was held by their friends, and joined them there, bravely sustaining the fire of the Republicans, who fired with such good effect that the ditch was filled with bodies. The men at the top of the embankment replied with a no less deadly fire. At that moment the National Guard of Fou- g^res came upon the battlefield at full speed, and their presence put an end to the affair. The Na- tional Guards and some excited soldiers were already crossing the ditch to plunge into the woods ; but the commandant shouted to them in his martial voice : " Do you want to be shot down in there ? " Thereupon they rejoined the Republican battalion, which was left in possession of the field, not, how- ever, without great loss. All the old hats were placed on the bayonet points, the muskets were raised in the air, and twice the troops shouted as with one voice : '' l^ive la Republique ! " Even the wounded sitting by the roadside partook of the enthusiasm, and Hulot grasped Gerard's hands, saying : " These fellows are what they call comrades, eh ? " Merle was entrusted with the duty of burying the 58 THE CHOUANS dead in a ravine by the road. Some of the other soldiers attended to carrying the wounded. Horses and carts from the neighboring farms were put in requisition, and the sufferers were placed therein upon the clothes of the dead. Before they began their march, the National Guard of Foug^res turned over to Hulot a severely wounded Chouan whom they had captured at the foot of the steep slope up which his comrades had escaped ; he had fallen back, betrayed by his failing strength. " Thanks for your assistance, citizens," said the commandant. " Tonnerre de Dieu I we might have had a bad quarter of an hour but for you. Look out for yourselves ! the war has begun. Adieu, my good fellows." Hulot then turned to the prisoner. " What's your general's name .■' " he asked. "The Gars." " Whom do you mean ? Marche-a-Terre ? " "No, the Gars." " Where did the Gars come from ? " To that question the King's Chasseur, whose harsh, savage features were distorted by pain, made no reply, but took his rosary and began to repeat prayers. "The Gars is that young ci-devant with the black cravat, 1 suppose 1 He was sent hither by the tyrant and his allies, Pitt and Coburg — " At those words the Chouan, whose ideas were limited in extent, raised his head proudly and ex- claimed : THE CHOUANS 59 " Sent by God and the king ! " He uttered the words with an energy that ex- hausted his strength. The commandant realized the difficulty of questioning a dying man, whose whole appearance denoted ignorant fanaticism, and he turned his head away with a frown. Two soldiers, friends of those whom Marche-a-Terre had so bru- tally despatched with a blow of his whip at the road- side — for they had died there — fell back a few steps, took aim at the Chouan, whose fixed eyes did not fall before their raised musket barrels, fired upon him point-blank, and he fell. When the soldiers approached to strip him, he cried again in a loud voice : " Vive le roi!" "Yes, yes, you rascal," said Clef-des-CcEurs, "go and eat buckwheat cake with your blessed Virgin. Here he yells: ' yive le tyran!' in our faces, when we thought he was done for ! " " Here are the brigand's papers, commandant," said Beau-Pied. "Oho!" cried Clef-des-Coeurs, " just come and look at this foot soldier of the good Lord, with the colors on his stomach ! " Hulot and several soldiers drew near the Chou- an's entirely nude body, and saw on his breast a sort of tattooing of a bluish shade, representing a blazing heart. It was the rallying sign of the members of the fraternity of the Sacred Heart. Be- neath the drawing Hulot read : Marie Lambrequin, doubtless the Chouan's name. 60 THE CHOUANS " You see, Clef-des-Coeurs ! " said Beau-Pied. "Well, it would take you a hundred decades to guess the purpose of that decoration." " What do I know about the pope's uniforms ! " retorted Clef-des-Coeurs. "Miserable beetle-crusher, will you never learn anything ? " returned Beau-Pied. " Don't you see that they promised this dandy he should be born again, and he had his gizzard painted on his breast to identify him ? " Even Hulot himself could not refrain from joining in the general hilarity that greeted this sally, which was not without some foundation. By that time Merle had finished burying the dead and the wounded had been arranged as comfortably as pos- sible in two carts by their comrades. The other soldiers, falling in in two files beside these impro- vised ambulances, descended the other side of the mountain toward the province of Maine, having at their feet the lovely valley of La Pelerine, the rival of Couesnon, Hulot, with his two friends Gerard and Merle, followed his soldiers at a slow pace, hop- ing to reach Ernee without mishap, where the wounded could be cared for. This battle, almost un- known amid the great events which were in store for France, took the name of the place where it was fought. It aroused some attention, however, in the West, where the people, being deeply interested in this second appeal to arms, noticed a change in the way in which the Chouans renewed the war. Formerly they would not have attacked such large THE CHOUANS 6l detachments. According to Hulot's conjectures, the young Royalist he had noticed must be the Gars, the new general whom the princes had sent to France, and who, according to the custom of royalist leaders, concealed his title and his name beneath one of those sobriquets called noms de guerre. That circumstance made the commandant as anxious after his disastrous victory as when he first suspected the ambuscade ; several times he turned and looked back at the plateau of La Pelerine, which they were leaving behind and from which still came, at inter- vals, the muffled sound of the drums of the National Guard who were marching down into the valley of Couesnon while the Blues marched down into the valley of La Pelerine. " Can either of you," he said abruptly to his two friends, "fathom the motive of the Chouans' at- tack ? To them, musket shots are an article of commerce and I don't as yet see what profit they have made on these. They have lost at least a hundred men, and we," he added, drawing back his right cheek and winking, as if to smile, "haven't lost sixty. Tonnerre de Dieii! I don't understand the speculation. The rascals might have avoided attacking us, for we should have passed along like letters in the mail, and I don't see what good it did them to make holes in our men." And he pointed sadly to the two cartloads of wounded. " Perhaps they wanted to bid us good-day," he added. 62 THE CHOUANS " But, commandant, they got our hundred and fifty greenhorns," suggested Merle. " If the recruits had hopped into the woods like frogs, we wouldn't have gone to fish 'em out, espe- cially after they had given us a volley," rejoined Hulot. — No, no," he added, " there's something underneath it all." He turned again toward La Pelerine. " Stay," he cried, " see ! " Although the three officers were already at a con- siderable distance from the fatal plateau, their trained eyes easily distinguished Marche-a-Terre and some other Chouans, who had taken possession of it after them. "Forward, double quick!" cried Hulot to his men, " start up and make your horses move faster than that. Are their legs frozen .-' Have they come from Pitt and Coburg too } " His words caused the little troop to move rapidly forward. " As for the mystery, which seems to me too ob- scure to pierce, God grant, my friends," he said to the two officers, "that it be not unravelled with musket balls at Ernee ! I greatly fear we shall learn that the Mayenne road is intercepted by the subjects of the king." « The strategic problem that made Commandant Hulot's moustache bristle, was causing no less anx- iety at the same moment to the men he had seen on the crest of La Pelerine. As soon as the sound of the drum of the Foug^res National Guard had died away, and Marche-a-Terre saw that the Blues were at the foot of the long descent, he cheerily gave the cry of the screech-owl, and the Chouans reappeared, but in smaller numbers. Some of them probably were engaged in caring for the wounded in the village of La Pelerine, which lies on the Coues- non slope of the mountain. Two or three leaders of the King's Chasseurs were among those who joined Marche-a-Terre. Four yards away, the young noble sat on a block of granite, apparently absorbed by the numerous thoughts incident to the difficulties which his enter- prise already presented. Marche-a-Terre made a sort of screen with his hand to protect his eyes from the glare of the sun and gazed sadly at the road the Republicans were following across the valley of La Pelerine. With his small, piercing black eyes, he tried to make out what was taking place on the opposite slope of the valley. (63) 64 THE CHOUANS " The Blues will intercept the messenger," said, in a fierce tone, that one of the leaders who stood nearest to Marche-a-Terre. " By Sainte Anne d'Auray, why did you make us fight?" demanded another. "To save your own skin ? " Marche-a-Terre darted a venomous glance at the questioner and struck the ground with the butt of his heavy carbine. " Am I the chief ? " he asked. Then, after a pause : " If you had all fought as 1 did, not one of the Blues would have escaped," he added, pointing to the remains of Hulot's detachment. "Then perhaps the wagon would have got here." "Do you suppose," said a third, "that they would have thought of sending an escort with it or detaining it if we had let them go their way quietly? You wanted to save your dog's skin, because you didn't think the Blues had started. For the good health of his own muzzle, he's made the rest of us bleed," added the orator, turning to the others, " and what's more, we shall lose twenty thousand francs in good gold." "Muzzle yourself!" cried Marche-a-Terre, step- ping back three paces and taking aim at his assailant. " You don't hate the Blues but you love gold. You shall die without confession, like a damned villain who hasn't been to communion this year ! " The insult angered the Chouan to such a point that the color left his cheeks and a low growl issued THE CHOUANS 65 from his lips as he prepared to take aim at Marche- a-Terre. The young chief darted between them, knocked their carbines from their hands with the barrel of his own rifle and demanded an explana- tion of the dispute, for the conversation had been carried on in Bas-Breton with which he was not familiar. " Monsieur le Marquis," said Marche-a-Terre, " it's all the shabbier of them to bear me a grudge, for I left Pille-Miche behind and he may be able to save the carriage from the robbers' claws." As he spoke he pointed to the Blues, who, in the eyes of those faithful servants of the altar and the throne, were, one and all, murderers of Louis XVI., and brigands. "What!" cried the young man angrily, "are you staying on here to rob a carriage, you cowards, who couldn't win a victory in the first battle in which I have led you ! But how could anyone triumph with such purposes in view ? Are the de- fenders of God and the king mere highwaymen ? By Sainte Anne d'Auray ! we have to make war on the Republic, not on diligences. Those who are guilty of such disgraceful deeds from this time on, will not receive absolution and will not share in the favors reserved for the king's worthy servitors." A low muttering arose among those who listened. It was easy to see that the new leader's authority, so difficult to establish over those undisciplined hordes, was seriously threatened. The young man, who had not failed to observe that indication, was al- 5 66 THE CHOUANS ready casting about for some way to save the honor of his position, when the silence was broken by the rapid trot of a horse. All heads were turned in the direction in which the newcomer might be expected to appear. It was a young woman riding astride a small Breton horse, which she urged to a gallop in order to reach the group of Chouans more quickly, when she saw the young man among them. "What's the matter here."*" she asked, looking from the Chouans to their leader. " Would you believe, madame, that they are waiting for the diligence from Mayenne to Foug^res, with the purpose of robbing it, although we have just had a skirmish to release our Gars from Fou- g^res, which has cost us many men, and even then we failed to wipe out the Blues.? " " Well, Where's the harm ? " asked the young woman, who, with a woman's natural tact, divined the secret of the scene at once. " You have lost some men, but we shall never lack men. The mes- senger carries money, and we shall always lack that ! We will bury our men, who will go to Heaven, and we will take the money, which will go into all these brave fellows' pockets. Where's the diffi- culty ? " The Chouans signified their approval of these words by a unanimous smile. " Is there nothing in all this that makes you blush ? " replied the young man in a low tone. " Are you in such need of money that you must take it on the highroads ? " THE CHOUANS 67 " I am so famished for it, marquis, tiiat I believe I would put my heart in pawn if it weren't taken," she said, with a coquettish smile. " But where do you come from, pray, to suppose you can make use of Chouans without letting them pillage a Blue or two here and there ? Don't you know the saying : As big a thief as a screech-owl ? And what is a Chouan, pray ? Besides," she added, raising her voice, " isn't it just ? Haven't the Blues taken all the Church's property and ours ? " " Another murmur, very different from the growl with ivhich the Chouans had answered the marquis, greeted these words. The young man, whose brow was growing darker, thereupon led the young lady aside and said to her with the sharp displeasure of a man of good breeding : "Will those gentlemen come to La Vivetiere on the appointed day? " "Yes," she replied, "all of them, the Intime, Grand- Jacques and perhaps Ferdinand." " Permit me then to return ; for I cannot sanction such acts of brigandage by my presence. Yes, madame, I said acts of brigandage. There may be something noble about being robbed, but — " " Very well," she broke in, interrupting him, " I shall have your share and I thank you for turning it over to me. A little extra prize money will do me a great deal of good. My mother is so slow about sending me money that I am in despair." " Adieu ! " cried the marquis. And he disap- peared ; but the young lady hurried after him. 68 THE CHOUANS "Why don't you stay with me?" she asked, with the half-despotic, half-caressing glance with which women who have rights over a man can so fully express their wishes. " Aren't you going to pillage the carriage ? " "Pillage?" she rejoined, "what a strange ex- pression ! Let me explain — " " Not a word," he said, taking her hands and kissing them with the superficial gallantry of a courtier. — " Listen," he continued after a pause, " if I should stay here during the capture of the diligence, our men would kill me, for I would — " "You wouldn't kill any of them," she rejoined hastily, "for they would bind your hands, with the consideration due to your rank, and, after levying a contribution on the Republicans sufificient to provide for their equipment and their subsistence and to purchase powder, they would obey you blindly." " And you want me to command here ? If my life is necessary to the cause I defend, permit me to save the honor of my authority. If I retire 1 can remain in ignorance of this cowardly performance. I will return and accompany you." He walked swiftly away. The young lady lis- tened to his retreating footsteps with evident dis- pleasure. When the rustling of dried leaves had gradually died away, she remained for a moment lost in thought, then returned in great haste to the Chouans. She made a disdainful gesture and said to Marche-a-Terre, who assisted her to dis- mount : THE CHOUANS 69 ** That young man wants to make war on the Republic according to military rules ! — ah, well ! a few hours from now he'll change his mind. — How he treated me ! " she said to herself after a pause. She sat down upon the stone the marquis had just quitted, and awaited in silence the arrival of the carriage. Among the most remarkable phenom- ena of that epoch was the case of this young lady of noble birth, impelled by violent passions to throw herself into the struggle of the monarchy against the spirit of the age, and spurred on by the vivacity of her emotions to acts in which, so to speak, she was not wittingly an accomplice, therein resembling so many others who acted under the impulse of mental exaltation, often fruitful of great things. Like her, many women played parts, some heroic, some blameworthy, in this tumult. The Royalist cause found no emissaries more devoted or more active than these women, but none of the heroines of that party expiated the errors into which their devotion led them, or the misery incident to situations from which their sex should debar them, more cruelly than this lady, as she sat upon the granite boulder, with despair in her heart, unable to withhold her admiration for the young leader's noble disdain and loyalty to his convictions. Insensibly she fell into a deep reverie. Bitter memories made her long for the innocence of her early years, and regret that she had not fallen a victim to the Revolution, whose victorious progress could not now be arrested by such weak hands as hers. 70 THE CHOUANS The carriage which was in a measure responsible for the attack of the Chouans, had left the little town of Ernee some moments before the skirmish between the two parties. Nothing depicts a country more accurately than the condition of its social mechanism. In that connection, this carriage de- serves honorable mention. The Revolution itself had not the power to destroy it, it is still in use in our day. When Turgot redeemed the exclusive privilege a company had obtained from Louis XIV. of carrying passengers all over the kingdom, and in- stituted the enterprises known as Tiirgotines, the provinces were flooded with the old chariots of Mes- sieurs de Vousges and Chanteclaire and the widow Lacombe. One of those wretched vehicles opened communications between Mayenne and Fougeres. Some obstinate conservatives had long ago, by an- tiphrasis, given it the name of la turgotine, either in imitation of Paris or in detestation of a minister who attempted innovations. This turgotine was a rickety cabriolet with two very high wheels, in which two persons inclined to be corpulent would have found it difficult to sit. As the narrow dimensions of the frail machine limited its interior capacity to two per- sons, and as the box which formed the driver's seat was reserved exclusively for the use of the mail, if travellers had any luggage, they were compelled to hold it between their legs, already terribly cramped in their little box which was not unlike a pair of bellows in shape. Its original color and that of the wheels, furnished an insoluble enigma to travellers. THE CHOUANS 7 1 Two leather curtains, still unmanageably stiff de- spite their long service, were supposed to shelter the sufferers from rain and cold. The driver, sit- ting on a bench like that of the meanest Parisian vans, was forced to join in the conversation by reason of his position between his two-legged and his four-legged victims. The equipage bore a curious resemblance to a decrepit old man who has passed safely through a goodly number of catarrhal fevers and apoplectic strokes, and whom death seems to respect ; it groaned as it moved and at times fairly shrieked. Like a traveller overtaken by drowsiness, it swayed from side to side and backward and forward, as if trying to offset the violent movements of the two little Breton horses that dragged it over a passably rough road. This monument of a bygone age contained three travel- lers, who, as they left Ernee, where they had changed horses, continued a conversation with the driver, begun before reaching the town. ** How do you suppose the Chouans would dare show themselves around here ? " the driver was saying. "They just told me at Ernee that Com- mandant Hulot hasn't left Fougeres yet." "Ah! my friend," replied the younger of the travellers, "you risk only your carcass! If you had three hundred crowns about you, as I have, and were known to be a good patriot, you wouldn't be so calm ! " " You talk a good deal at all events," retorted the driver, shaking his head. 72 THE CHOUANS " Having counted the sheep, the wolf eats them," observed the second passenger. He was a man apparently about forty years of age, dressed in black, in all probability a priest of the neighborhood. He had an immense double chin and his florid complexion pointed to the clerical pro- fession. Although short and stout, he displayed considerable agility whenever he was called upon to enter or leave the carriage. " Are you one of the Chouans ? " cried he of the three hundred crowns, whose handsome goatskin hid trousers of excellent cloth and a very neat jacket, which indicated a well-to-do farmer. " By the soul of Saint Robespierre, I swear that you would be warmly received — " He looked with his gray eyes from the driver to the passenger, pointing to two pistols in his belt. . " The Bretons aren't afraid of those things," said the priest scornfully. " Besides, do we look as if we wanted your money .-' " Every time that the word money was pronounced the driver became silent, and the priest had just enough wit to suspect that the patriot had money of his own and that their driver had some in his charge. " Have you a load to-day, Coupiau ? " queried the abbe. ** Oh ! I've got nothing, as you might say. Mon- sieur Gudin," the driver replied. Abbe Gudin, having scrutinized the faces of the patriot and Coupiau, found them equally imperturb- able. THE CHOUANS 73 "So much the better for you," the patriot re- plied ; " in that case 1 can tai