On one of the prisoners taken at the Champ-Saint-Père a list was found of the young men forming the corps d'élite of the royalist forces. This list, these attacks made on various sides at the same time, these arrests of men known for the enthusiasm of their Legitimist opinions, naturally put the authorities on their guard, and made them regard as imminent the dangers they had hitherto treated lightly.
If the countermand of the uprising did not reach the country districts of La Vendée in time, still less could the provinces of Brittany and Maine receive the order; and there the standard of revolt was openly unfurled. In the first, the division of Vitré took the field, and even won a victory for the Bretons at Bréal,--an ephemeral victory, which was changed to defeat the following day at Gaudinière.
In Maine Gaullier received the countermand too late to stop his gars from making a bloody fight at Chaney, which lasted six hours; and besides that engagement (a serious one in its results) the peasantry, unwilling to return to their homes after beginning the insurrection, kept up a daily guerilla warfare with the various columns of troops which lined the country.
We may boldly declare that the countermand of May 22, the headlong and unsupported movements which then took place, the want of cohesion and confidence which naturally resulted, did more for the government of July than the zeal of all its agents put together.
In the provinces where these premature attempts were made it was impossible to revive the ardor thus chilled and wasted. The insurgent peasantry had time to reflect; and reflection, often favorable to calculation, is always fatal to sentiment. The leaders, whose names were now made known to the government, were easily surprised and arrested on returning to their homes.
It was still worse in the districts where the peasantry had openly taken the field. Finding themselves abandoned by their own supporters, and not receiving the reinforcements on which they counted, they believed themselves betrayed, broke their guns in two, and returned, indignantly, to their cottages.
The Legitimist insurrection died in the womb. The cause of Henri V. lost two provinces before his flag was raised; but such was the courage of these sons of giants that, as we are now about to see, they did not yet despair.
Eight days had elapsed since the events recorded in our last chapter, and during those eight days the political turmoil going on around Machecoul was so violent that it swept into its orbit all the personages of our history whose own passions and interests might otherwise have kept them aloof from it.
Bertha, made uneasy at first by Michel's disappearance, was quite reassured when he returned; and her happiness was shown with such effusion and publicity that it was impossible for the young man, unless he broke the promise he had made to Mary, to do otherwise than appear, on his side, glad to see her. The many services she had to render to Petit-Pierre, the many details of the correspondence with which she was intrusted, so absorbed Bertha's time that she did not notice Michel's sadness and depression, or the constraint with which he yielded to the familiarity her masculine habits led her to show to the man whom she regarded as her betrothed husband.
Mary, who had rejoined her father and sister two hours after leaving Michel on the islet of Jonchère, avoided carefully all occasions of being alone with her lover. When the necessities of their daily life brought them together she took every possible means to put her sister at an advantage in Michel's eyes; and when her own eyes encountered those of the young baron she looked at him with so supplicating an expression that he felt himself gently but relentlessly held to the promise he had given.