"No, no, mon gars," said La Vireville, rather touched, but not altogether taken with the appearance of the gift. "Keep it to ensure your own safety. But . . . what the devil is it?"
"A cow's tail that has been offered to St. Herbot at his chapel in Finistère," replied the Breton. "You will not take it, Monsieur Augustin? It has great virtue."
But La Vireville was firm in his refusal, and Grain d'Orge, replacing his talisman, moved off to convey his orders to the already melting band of Chouans. He came back, however, in a moment or two to repeat his question.
"What will you do, Monsieur Augustin?"
"For the present," replied his leader composedly, "I am going to offer my sword to anyone here who will accept it."
(3)
And that was why the Chevalier de la Vireville found himself, half an hour later, under the command of the Comte de Contades, trying, with Loyal-Emigrant and the remnants of d'Hervilly's regiment, to stem the steady advance of Hoche's forces, that outnumbered the Royalists by three to one. But everything was against them. The little eminence on which they fell back might well have been defended had not the Blues already got possession of the park of artillery at Portivy, which, owing to lack of horses, had not been removed in time. So they fell back once more, in good order, not a man of them attempting to join the throngs at Port d'Orange, where the sick and wounded, and some of the regimental colours, were, despite the tempest, being embarked on the boats of the English flotilla.
It was now about four o'clock in the morning, and the rain had returned to mist. It was in this mist that, still retiring before the relentless pressure of the Blues, the two regiments came to the knoll by the hamlet of St. Julien, where the troops of the second division were quartered under their commander, the young Comte de Sombreuil, the brother of the heroine of the 'glass of blood.' Here, on his horse at their head, a gallant figure in his hussar's dolman of chamois colour faced with red, his high shako looped about with cords and decorated with the black cockade, was Sombreuil himself.
And La Vireville heard him say to Contades, his handsome young face contracted with pain, "Puisaye told me to remain here, and Puisaye himself has embarked!"
For some time Fortuné had been asking himself what had become of the general-in-chief, and yet the answer, now that it had come, seemed incredible. But it was confirmed by the lieutenant-colonel of the régiment de Rohan, when he came up with his men, who had been ordered to hold the little battery at Port d'Orange, and could not, because the battery consisted merely of one small cannon without ammunition or even a gun-carriage. La Vireville began to see why Puisaye, a moral if not a physical coward, had fled from a situation which he was incompetent to control, and disasters of his own making which it was too late to repair.