After a halt of a quarter of an hour, which gave the Chouans time to resume their own uniforms, they started again; but they caught sight of the entire population hastening from the left to witness the execution.
It was a curious thing to see these men, who, on the previous day, had been threatened with the fatal instrument, and who had looked with dread upon the man who had it in charge—it was a curious thing to see this instrument, like Diomedes' horses, which fed upon human flesh, cast itself upon its master and devour him in turn.
A black mass, preceded by a stick with a white handkerchief floating at the end, hurried through the crowd. They were the Republicans who had taken advantage of the truce of God which Cadoudal had offered them, and were coming, preceded by the white emblem of truce, to join the silence of scorn to the angry outbursts of the populace, who, having nothing at stake, respected nothing.
Cadoudal ordered a halt, and, after courteously saluting the Blues, with whom he and his men had exchanged death blows on the previous night, he said: "Come, gentlemen. The spectacle is a grand one and well worth the presence of men of all parties. Cut-throats, drowners, and assassins have no flag; or if they have one it is the standard of death—the black flag. Come, we will none of us march beneath that flag."
And he went on again, mingling with the Republicans, and trusting them as they trusted him.
[CHAPTER XXVII]
THE EXECUTION
An onlooker, watching the strange procession as it approached from the far side of Moutiers and slowly ascended the hill, would have found it difficult to make out the meaning of the strange jumble of men on foot and on horseback: Whites in the costume made sacred by Charette, Cathelineau and Cadoudal, Blues in the Republican uniform, accompanied by women, children and peasants, and rolling along in the midst of this human tide, restless as the waves of the ocean, an unknown machine—unless the spectator had seen one of Coster de Saint-Victor's placards.