"But if the attempt fails?" cried Petit-Pierre.
"Five or six hundred men will have been uselessly killed, that is all. It is well that from time to time a party, even if it fails, should give such examples, not only to its own country but to neighboring nations."
"You are not of those who have sent back their men, then?" asked Petit-Pierre.
"No, monsieur; but I am of those who have sworn to die for her Royal Highness. Besides," he added, "perhaps the affair has already begun, and there may be no choice but to follow the movement."
"How so?" asked Petit-Pierre, Bonneville, and the marquis, in one breath.
"Shots were fired to-day at the fair at Montaigu--"
"And firing is going on now at the fords of the Boulogne," said an unknown voice from the doorway, on the threshold of which a new personage now appeared.
[XXX.]
THE WARNING.
The person we now introduce, or rather the person who now introduced himself into the salon of the Marquis de Souday, was the commissary-general of the future Vendéan army, who had changed his name, well-known at the bar of Nantes, for that of Pascal.