“You wouldn’t have us give up now, Annot, would you? You wouldn’t have us lay down our arms, and call ourselves republicans, after all we have done and suffered?”
Annot didn’t answer. She wouldn’t call herself a republican; but her sufferings and sorrows had greatly damped the loyal zeal she had shown when she worked her little fingers to the bone in embroidering a white flag for her native village. She was now tired and cold, wet and hungry; for Chapeau had been able to get no provisions but a few potatoes: so she laid herself down on the hard bed which he had prepared for her; and as he spread his own coat over her shoulders, she felt that it was, at any rate, some comfort to have her own lover once more near her.
Jacques and the old smith had no bed, so they were fain to content themselves with sitting opposite to each other on two low stools; the best seats which the hut afforded. Jacques felt that it was incumbent on him to do the honours of the place, and that some apology was necessary for the poor accommodation which he had procured for his friends.
“This is a poor place for you, Michael Stein,” he commenced, “a very poor place for both of you, after your own warm cottage at Echanbroignes.”
“It’s a poor place, truly, M. Chapeau,” said the smith, looking round on the bare walls of the little hut.
“Indeed it is, my friend, and sorry am I to see you and Annot so badly lodged. But what then; we shall be in Laval tomorrow, and have the best of everything—that is, if not tomorrow, the day after.”
“I don’t much care about the best of everything, M. Chapeau. I’ve not used myself to the best, but I would it had pleased God to have allowed me to labour out the rest of my days in the little smithy at Echanbroignes. I never wanted more than the bread which I could earn.”
“You never did, Michael, you never did,” said Chapeau, trying to flatter the old man; “and, like an honest man, you endure without flinching what you suffer for your King. Give us your hand, my friend, we’ve no wine to drink his health, but as long as our voices are left, let us cry: Vive le Roi!”
The old man silently rejected Chapeau’s proposal that he should evince his loyalty just at present by shouting out the Vendean war-cry. “I take no credit, M. Chapeau,” said he, “for suffering for my King, though, while he lived, he always had my poor prayers for his safety. It wasn’t to fight the blues that I left my little home. It was because I couldn’t stay any without fearing to see that girl there in the rude hands of Lechelle’s soldiers, and my own roof in a blaze. It’s all gone now, forge and tools; the old woman’s chair, the children’s cradle; it’s all gone, now and for ever. I don’t wish to curse any one, M. Chapeau, but I am not in the humour to cry Vive le Roi!”
“But Michael Stein, my dear friend,” urged Chapeau, “look what others have lost too. Have not others suffered as much? Look at the old Marquis, turned out of his house and everything lost; and yet you won’t hear a word of complaint fall from his mouth. Look at Madame de Lescure, her husband dying; her house burnt to the ground; without a bed to lie on, or a change of dress and yet she does not complain.”