"I have been told that you made a very exhaustive study of the country, and one deserving enough to be brought under my notice ..."
"By General La Fayette, doubtless?"
"Precisely."
"I thought he had done more than that, and had himself presented my report to you, sire."
"Quite true.... But I find a lacuna in that report."
I bowed in token that I was waiting to hear more.
"You were sent by General La Fayette," the king continued, "to study the possibility of establishing a National Guard in la Vendée, and you hardly mention either the possibility or impossibility of such a thing."
"True, sire, on the ground that the study of the locality convinced me that the establishment of a National Guard in the departments of la Loire-Inférieure, Maine-et-Loire, la Vendée and Deux-Sèvres would for the time being be ruinous to the middle classes of society, which have their business to attend to as notaries, drapers, cloth-weavers, locksmiths, joiners, barristers,—trading either wholesale or retail, in a word,—but have no time for horse exercise and drilling. It would, moreover, be a dangerous measure for this reason: the citizens who wore the uniform would become Blues again, and those who did not wear it would be Chouans. That is why I have nearly abandoned the idea and laid stress on the opening out of roads, on the furthering of communication, to act, as they say in medicine, as a species of dissolvent, rather than by revulsives: let the Vendeans get away from the influence of the nobles, and their women from the influence of the priests, and no more Vendean insurrections will be possible."
"Well, Monsieur Dumas, I am of a different opinion from yours. I believe that a Vendée is no longer possible, because there are no Vendeans left. Tell me where are the Elbées, the Bonchamps, the Lescures, the Laroche-Jaquelins and the Charettes?"
"Sire, where they were in 1789.... However, la Vendée need not be feared, now, or in the immediate future; I would go further still, and say that it would never again rise by itself, but somebody might throw himself into la Vendée and cause it to rise."