“It is impossible, sir,” cried Roland, “that under the First Consul any one can make that kind of war.”
“Ah! let us understand each other, colonel. I don’t say that the First Consul makes it; I say it is made in his name.”
“And who is the scoundrel that abuses the authority given him, to make war with a staff of executioners?”
“I have told you his name; he is called Thomas Millière. Question whom you please, colonel, and throughout all Vendée and Brittany you’ll hear but one voice on that man. From the day of the rising in Vendée and Brittany, now six years ago, Millière has been, always and everywhere, the most active agent of the Terror. For him the Terror did not end with Robespierre. He denounced to his superiors, or caused to be denounced to himself, the Breton and Vendéan soldiers, their parents, friends, brothers, sisters, wives, even the wounded and dying; he shot or guillotined them all without a trial. At Daumeray, for instance, he left a trail of blood behind him which is not yet, can never be, effaced. More than eighty of the inhabitants were slaughtered before his eyes. Sons were killed in the arms of their mothers, who vainly stretched those bloody arms to Heaven imploring vengeance. The successive pacifications of Brittany and Vendée have never slaked the thirst for murder which burns his entrails. He is the same in 1800 that he was in 1793. Well, this man—”
Roland looked at the general.
“This man,” continued the general, with the utmost calmness, “is to die. Seeing that society did not condemn him, I have condemned him.”
“What! Die at La Roche-Bernard, in the midst of the Republicans; in spite of his bodyguard of assassins and executioners?”
“His hour has struck; he is to die.”
Cadoudal pronounced these words with such solemnity that no doubt remained in Roland’s mind, not only as to the sentence, but also the execution of it. He was thoughtful for an instant.
“And you believe that you have, the right to judge and condemn that man, guilty as he is?”