This was quite possible, for at the lower end of the long littered table, sitting sideways as men who have but temporarily dropped into a place there, were Gilbert and M. de Royrand. Three other leaders were there also. He who sat with his hands outspread upon a map to keep it in position was the “saint of Poitou,” the Marquis de Lescure, whom, with his young kinsman, Louis had saluted that day in the Tuileries. Over him bent the only roturier of the party, Stofflet, the gamekeeper, who had raised the parishes round Maulevrier. Behind, leaning upon his sword, and pulling impatiently with his teeth at a glove, stood the Chevalier de Charette, hawk-faced and implacable, newly come from the Marais to join the grande armée.
“Was ever a house so full of generals!” whispered Louis half mockingly. “. . . Your pardon, Henri: I forgot you were all but one yourself!”
And the château had been even fuller of these unusual guests. Last night, the night of the council of war which had caused so much disorder in the library, it had harboured not only those now present, but the general-in-chief himself, the Marquis d’Elbée, and the Marquis de Donnissan, both of whom were now gone forth to their men. Many other chiefs had clattered in and out: Bernard de Marigny, the hot-tempered, who commanded the artillery; Forestier, who led the somewhat scanty cavalry; D’Autichamp and the Prince de Talmont, bearer of a famous name, lieutenants of the wounded Marquis de Bonchamps, the only leader of note who was absent; De Couëtus, Joly, Savin, Charette’s subordinates. For on this 13th day of August (harvest being over), seasoned by an almost unbroken career of victory that was blotted only by their costly defeat at Nantes, masters at present of all their territory, but threatened, from their very success, by the Convention’s extremest measures of hostility, the Vendean hosts had gathered to strike a united blow; and the little cathedral town of Luçon, some fifteen miles to the southward, had been selected as the object of attack.
Yet Louis, though he bore his uniform of the bodyguard, which the fancy occasionally seized him to put on, wore no sword, and Gilbert’s sheathed blade was keeping down a refractory map upon the table. For they were neither of them going with their comrades to take Luçon. D’Elbée had been anxious to leave some post occupied in his rear, for disaster had already overtaken him on the plains of Luçon, and Gilbert had offered to stay behind and hold Chantemerle. The house was not fortified, and could by no means stand a siege, but it could very well prove a check to any detached body of troops with which the Republicans in the neighbouring department of Deux-Sèvres might have a fancy to harass D’Elbée’s rear-guard. That this idea would occur to them was extremely unlikely, for all their available troops were already in Luçon. As, therefore, there was no prospect of the occupation being anything but a sinecure, Louis had been proportionately disgusted when the decision was first communicated to him, but he had refused to desert his cousin.
Even as he made his rather irreverent remark there was a stir in the little group at the end of the table. Lescure stood up, saying: “Well, gentlemen, I suppose we must get to horse;” and as he removed his hands the map of Luçon rolled itself resolutely together. Stofflet noticed it. “Is that a good or a bad omen?” he asked. He was of Lorraine, and his accent showed it.
“The third time is always lucky,” answered Charette in his curiously clear and biting voice.
“Are you ready, Henri?” asked Lescure of his cousin and adjutant. “Good-bye, M. de Château-Foix: it is in vain to try to thank you for your hospitality, or for your self-sacrifice in remaining behind.”
“You should thank me instead for my self-sacrifice in depriving myself of him,” said old Royrand, as he shook hands with his best lieutenant.
And Charette said: “To-day to me, to-morrow to you. But before you are hard pressed, Monsieur le Marquis, you shall see my Maraîchins cutting their way through to you.”
“You are very kind, gentlemen,” answered Gilbert, smiling, as he escorted them through the hall. “But I do not anticipate any necessity of the sort.”