[CHAPTER VIII]
THE MAN IN THE GREEN COAT
Those present at this scene had listened and looked on from a distance without interruption, realizing that they had before them two powerful personalities. The principal of the royalist agency was the first to break the silence.
"Gentlemen," said he, "it is always a gain when two leaders, even when they are about to separate—the one to do battle in the east, the other on the west of France, and though they may never meet again—it is always something gained when they exchange fraternal pledges as the knights of the Middle Ages were wont to do. You are all witnesses of the oath which these two leaders, in a cause which is also our own, have taken. They are men who do more than they promise. One, however, must return to the Morbihan, to unite the movement there with our own. Let us, therefore, take leave of the general who has completed his work in Paris, and turn to our own which has begun well."
"Gentlemen," said the Chouan, "I would gladly offer to remain here and fight with you to-morrow or to-day, but I confess that I know little about street warfare. The war I am used to carrying on is in ditches, ravines, bushes, and thick forests. Here I should be but one more soldier—there a chieftain would be wanting; and, since Quiberon of mournful memory, there are but two of us, Mercier and I."
"Go, my dear general," said Morgan; "you are fortunate to be able to fight in the open with no fear lest a chimney fall upon your head. God bring me to you, or you to me again!"
The Chouan took leave of every one, and more tenderly of his new friend, perhaps, than of his old acquaintances. Then noiselessly and on foot, as if he were the least of the royalist officers, he gained the Barrière d'Orléans, while Danican, Lemaistre, and the young president of the Section Le Peletier laid their plans for the following day. As he departed, they all remarked: "He is a formidable fellow, that Cadoudal!"
About the same time that he whose incognito we have just betrayed was taking leave of Morgan and his companions, and was making his way to the Barrière d'Orléans, a group of those young men of whom we have already spoken crossed from the Rue de la Loi to the Rue Feydeau, shouting: "Down with the Convention! Down with the Two-thirds Men! Long live the Sections!"
At the corner they found themselves face to face with a patrol of patriot soldiers, on whom the last orders of the Convention enjoined the greatest severity against all nocturnal brawlers.