“Who can it be?” said Henri. “Can it be Marigny, Charles?”
“Impossible,” said de Lescure; “Marigny is a fine, robust fellow, with a handsome open face. They say this man is just the reverse.”
“It isn’t d’Elbée come to life again, is it?” said Arthur Mondyon. “He’s ugly enough, and not very big.”
“Nonsense, Arthur, he’s an old man; and of all men the most unlikely to countenance such doings as those of these La Petite Vendée. I think, however, I know the man. It must be Charette. He is courageous, but yet cruel; and he has exactly that dash of mad romance in him which seems to belong to this new hero.”
“Charette is in the island of Noirmoutier,” said de Lescure, “and by all accounts, means to stay there. Had he been really willing to give us his assistance, we never need have crossed the Loire.”
“Oh! it certainly was not Charette,” said Chapeau. “I saw M. Charette on horseback once, and he carries himself as though he had swallowed a poker; and this gentleman twists himself about like—like—”
“Like a mountebank, I suppose,” said de Lescure.
“He rides well, all the same, M. Charles,” rejoined Chapeau.
“And who do you think he is, Chapeau?” said Henri.
Chapeau shrugged his shoulders, as no one but a Frenchman can shrug them, intending to signify the impossibility of giving an opinion; immediately afterwards he walked close up to his master, and whispered something in his ear. Henri looked astonished, almost confounded, by what his servant said to him, and then replied, almost in a whisper: “Impossible, Chapeau, quite impossible.”