“Not of the return of voluntary exiles, with our banished Princes at their head?”
“Perhaps,” said Château-Foix, “if they came back unsupported by Prussian or Austrian levies. But they will not.”
The Marquis de la Rouërie shrugged his shoulders. “Then, were you in my place, Monsieur, you would not, if you could, march on Paris to deliver the King?”
“I would do it to-morrow if I were sure that I should not meet Ferdinand of Brunswick under the walls!”
La Rouërie sprang to his feet. “M. de Château-Foix, men have called me reckless and unpractical, but you! . . . I will strike a bargain with you. Organise Vendée as I have organised Brittany, and in six months we will march together on Paris with never a Prussian to help us!”
So electric was his enthusiasm, as he stood there with sparkling eyes and outstretched hand, that the soldier’s dreams which Château-Foix had long relinquished glowed hot for a moment before him, and he stared up at La Rouërie fascinated, gripping the edge of the settle with his hands. The Breton laid hold of the heavy oaken table and dragged it nearer.
“See,” he said, taking out a knife and scoring the wood, “here is the Loire; here is your coast-line. I began by creating a council in the chef-lieu of every department. Now here are yours—Fontenay for your own department of Vendée proper,” he stabbed the point into the table, “Niort for Deux-Sèvres, Angers——”
Gilbert got up and interrupted the draughtsman. “Tell me as much as you will of your own plans, M. de la Rouërie,” he said gravely, “and be assured of my sympathy and admiration, but do not hope to see the like succeed on the left bank of the Loire. If our people ever rise——”
“You will wish that you had organised them beforehand,” said La Rouërie like a flash. He had left the knife still stabbed into the table. “You do concede, then, that there is a chance of their rising?”
“I do not know what to think,” replied Gilbert. “But if ever they do, I am assured of this, that they will never be organised from above, nor will political considerations have much power to sway them. If ever it comes, the uprising will be a purely spontaneous movement from below, due to the religious persecution which has pressed so heavily on Vendée for the past two years and more.”