“You need not wait any longer,” said Chapeau, “for Adolphe Denot is not to be hung at all. M. de Lescure has pardoned him. Yes, my friends, you will be spared an unpleasant job, and the rope and the tree will not be contaminated.”
“Pardoned him—pardoned Adolphe Denot—pardoned the traitor who brought Santerre and the republicans to Durbellière—pardoned the wretch who so grossly insulted Mademoiselle Agatha, and nearly killed M. le Marquis,” cried one after another immediately round the door. “If we pardon him, there will be an end of honesty and good faith. We will pardon our enemies, because M. de Lescure asks us. We will willingly pardon this Santerre and all his men. We will pardon everything and anybody, if M. Henri or M de Lescure asks it, except treason, and except a traitor. Go in, Jacques, and say that we will never consent to forgive the wretch who insulted Mademoiselle Larochejaquelin. By all that is sacred we will hang him!”
“If you do, my friends,” answered Chapeau, “you must kill M. de Lescure first, for he will defend him with his own body and his own sword.”
Chapeau again returned to the house, and left the peasants outside, loudly murmuring. Hitherto they had passively obeyed their leaders. They had gone from one scene of action to another. They had taken towns and conquered armies, and abstained not only from slaughter, but even from plunder, at the mere request of those whom they had selected as their own Generals; now, for the first time they shewed a determination to disobey. The offence of which their victim had been guilty, was in their eyes unpardonable. They were freely giving all—their little property, their children, their blood, for their church and King. They knew that they were themselves faithful and obedient to their leaders, and they could not bring themselves to forgive one whom they had trusted, and who had deceived them.
Chapeau returned to the house, but he did not go back to M. de Lescure. He went upstairs to his master, and found him alone with his sister, and explained to them what was going on before the front-door.
“They will never go away, Mademoiselle, as long as the breath is in the man’s body. They are angry now, and they care for no one, not even for M. Henri himself; and it’s no wonder for them to be angry. He that was so trusted, and so loved; one of the family as much as yourself, M. Henri. Why, if I were to turn traitor, and go over to the republicans, it could hardly be worse. If ever I did, I should expect them to pinch me to pieces with hot tweezers, let alone hanging.”
“I will go down to them,” said M. Henri.
“It will be no use,” said Chapeau, “they will not listen to you.”
“I will try them at any rate, for they have never yet disobeyed me. I know they love me, and I will ask for Adolphe’s life as a favour to myself: if they persist in their cruelty, if they do kill him, I will lay down my sword, and never again raise it in La Vendée.”
“If it were put off for a week, or a day, M. Henri, so that they could get cool; if you could just consent to his being hung, but say that he was to have four-and-twenty hours to prepare himself, and then at the end of that time they wouldn’t care about it: mightn’t that do? Wouldn’t that be the best plan, Mademoiselle?”