La Vireville shrugged his shoulders. "Why indeed! At any rate I see the lilies, as I had hoped, blooming on Fort Penthièvre. Only the gardener, you know, is not far off. . . ."
Indeed, every émigré knew by nightfall that the victorious Republicans had established themselves in the important position of Ste. Barbe, a village which commanded the entry into the peninsula, where they could be seen feverishly working at entrenching themselves. The invaders were in danger of being penned, like trapped creatures, into that tongue of land on which they had attained a foothold.
(2)
The Marquis de Flavigny never sent his unfinished letters to England. If he had completed them they would not have been very pleasant reading. Even the Comte d'Hervilly realised the disastrous consequences of being shut into Quiberon. The night after the influx of the fugitives he attacked the Republicans (who were taken by surprise), pushed his onset up to their very outworks, lost his head, and abandoned the attack, for no apparent reason, just at the very moment of success. Quem Deus vult perdere . . .
After that abortive attack on Ste. Barbe things went quickly from bad to worse. The sixth of July had been on all counts an unmitigated disaster; the Chouan defeat did not fail to have a bad moral effect on the Bretons of the interior, and the useless mouths, as La Vireville had only too truly called them, brought the number of souls on the narrow strip of land up to fourteen thousand. It became a difficulty to feed the refugees; and most of them were not of the slightest military value. Old men, women, and children, they had to subsist as best they were able, shelterless, and cooking what they could get on fires of dung and seaweed. And even the Chouans were sullen and discontented; it was hard to make them work at the entrenchments with any zeal, and if they were reproached with their idleness they invariably replied that they had had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours. In fact, a small ration of salt meat and biscuit did seem insufficient to a peasant accustomed to more solid nourishment. The Comte de Puisaye, indeed, announced in the order of the day that he wished the brave Chouans, those dauntless supporters of the altar and the throne, to be particularly well treated, but as, this order once promulgated, he took no steps whatever to see that it was carried out, it frequently happened that the supporters of the altar and the throne went very hungry.
The Chouans of the Chevalier de la Vireville's little band, however, never suffered from that particular privation; their leader saw to that. How he managed it, by what system of combined begging, storming, and cajoling, the young Le Goffic knew, but to de Flavigny it was a marvel how he contrived to procure rations for them. The two friends did not very often meet, for though de Flavigny, who was only attached to the régiment du Dresnay, had more leisure than most officers, La Vireville, whose men called for constant attention of a kind that disciplined troops hardly needed, had less. Yet, curiously enough, in those few days of breathing-space, while the Royalists were awaiting the moment for another attempt to free themselves of the snare in which Hoche held them, when the young Republican general indeed was writing, with cruel and justified metaphor, "The enemies are in the rat-trap, and I with divers cats at the door of it."—in those days, when every man's private affairs had sunk into relative unimportance, de Flavigny was to learn that concerning his comrade's personal history which, in spite of occasional speculation, he had never really sought to know. He was, in fact, himself an agent in the chance encounter—if there be such a thing—which brought about the disclosure.
It befell as follows: One afternoon, de Flavigny, who was billeted with some other gentlemen of like standing with himself in a cottage in the tiny village of Clouarnet, found himself in his quarters with a couple of these, and, in addition, an officer whom they had brought with them, a M. de St. Four, of the régiment de la marine, usually known, from the name of its colonel, as the regiment d'Hector. M. de St. Four was a person of agreeable address and appearance, about forty years of age, who, when younger, had evidently been very handsome. He had, it seemed, already 'chouanné' a little in southern Brittany under Cadoudal.
The Marquis was standing talking to the newcomer by the big, projecting, smoke-blackened hearth, when a tall figure suddenly darkened the doorway of the cottage.
"Is M. de Flavigny within?" it inquired, and René recognised the voice as La Vireville's.
"Yes, I am here. Do you want me, Fortuné?" he asked, turning round from the hearth. The visitor did the same. And, as La Vireville stooped his head to enter, it occurred to de Flavigny to introduce him and St. Four, Chouans both of them.