It was then decided that they should all remain there that night, that de Lescure and Adolphe should return with Marie to Clisson on the following morning, and that Henri and the priest should accompany Foret and the postillion to St. Florent, there to make the best arrangement within their power for the immediate protection of the place.
They were not very merry that evening, but they were by no means unhappy; as Henri had said they had much to talk of, and they spent an anxious evening, but each satisfied the other. Cathelineau felt himself to be in a new world, sitting down at table to eat with such companions as those around him. The sweet, kind face of Agatha disturbed him most. It almost unmanned him; he thought that it would be happiness enough for a life to be allowed to remain unseen where he might gaze on her. He felt that such beauty, such ineffable loveliness as hers could almost make him forget his country and his countrymen; and then he shuddered and turned his eyes away from her. But there she sat close to him: and she would speak to him, and ask him questions; she asked after his friends in St. Florent, after the women who were wounded, and she gave him money for the children who were made orphans; and then her hand touched his again, and he thought that he was asleep and dreaming.
Much of importance to their future plans was arranged that night, and such a council of war was probably never before assembled. The old man joined in their contemplated designs with as much energy as the youngest among them; the words rash and imprudent never once crossed his lips; nothing seemed rash to him that was to be undertaken for the restoration of the King. The priest took a very prominent part in it, and his word was certainly not for peace; he was the most urgent of the party for decided measures. De Lescure, Larochejaquelin, and Denot, argued, debated, and considered, as though war had always been their profession; but they all submitted, or were willing to submit, to Cathelineau; he had already commenced the war, and had been successful; he had already shewn the ready wit to contrive, and the bold hand to execute; his fitness to lead was acknowledged, and though two days since he was only a postillion, he was tacitly acknowledged by this little band of royalists, to be their leader.
And there too among these confederates sat Agatha and Marie, if not talking themselves, yet listening with almost breathless attention to the plans of the party; sharing their anxiety, promising their women’s aid, enchanting them with their smiles, or encouraging them with their tears. Cathelineau had heard how knights of old, famed in song, had spent their lives among scenes of battle and danger, and all for the smiles of the lady of their love; and now he thought he understood it. He could do the same to be greeted with the smiles of Agatha Larochejaquelin, and he would not dream of any richer reward. She was as an angel to him, who had left her own bright place in heaven to illuminate the holy cause in which he had now engaged himself; under such protection he could not be other than successful.
When Foret and Cathelineau dismounted, and were taken into the house by Henri and the Curé, they left their steeds in the care of Peter Berrier; but Peter has not been left ever since leading them up and down in sight of the white-washed lions. The revolt of St. Florent had been heard of in the servants’ hall as well as in the salon upstairs, and it was soon known that the heroes of the revolt were in the house, and that their horses were before the door. A couple of men and two or three boys soon hurried round, and Peter was relieved from his charge, and courteously led into the servants’ hall by Momont, the grey-headed old butler and favourite servant of the Marquis, and Jacques Chapeau, the valet, groom, and confidential factotum of Larochejaquelin. Peter was soon encouraged to tell his tale, and to explain the mission which had brought him and his two companions to Durbellière, and under ordinary circumstances the having to tell so good a tale would have been a great joy to him; but at the present moment Peter was not quite satisfied with his own position; why was the postillion in the salon while he was in the kitchen? Peter usually was a modest man enough, and respectful to his superiors; the kitchen table in a nobleman’s house would generally be an elysium to him; he had no idea that he was good enough to consort with Marquises and their daughters; but he did think himself equal to Cathelineau, the postillion, and as Cathelineau was in the salon, why should he be in the kitchen? He quite understood that Cathelineau was thus welcomed, thus raised from his ordinary position in consequence of what he had done at St. Florent, but why shouldn’t he, Berrier, be welcomed, and raised also? He couldn’t see that Cathelineau had done more than he had himself. He was the first man to resist; he had been the first hero, and yet he was left for half an hour to lead about a horse, an ass, and an old mule, as though he were still the ostler at an auberge, and then he was merely taken into the servants’ hall, and asked to eat cold meat, while Cathelineau was brought into a grand room upstairs to talk to lords and ladies; this made Peter fidgety and uncomfortable; and when he heard, moreover, that Cathelineau was to sup upstairs at the same table with the Marquis and the ladies, all his pleasure in the revolt was destroyed, he had no taste for the wine before him, and he wished in his heart that he had joined the troops, and become a good republican. He could not bear the aristocratic foppery of that Cathelineau.
“And were you a conscript yourself, Peter Berrier?” said Jacques Chapeau.
“Of course I was,” said Peter. “Why, haven’t you heard what the revolt of St. Florent was about?”
“Well; we have heard something about it,” said Momont; “but we didn’t exactly hear your name mentioned.”
“You couldn’t have heard much of the truth then,” said Berrier.
“We heard,” said Chapeau, “how good Cathelineau began by taking three soldiers prisoners.”