Sir Isumbras at the Ford

by D. K. Broster

"I have already had one 'last night,'" replied the Chouan, with rather a wry smile. "I did not expect another. But at least it is under the stars this time."

He settled himself under the lee of a wall to sleep. The stars indeed were very bright, save just near the moon. In the silence he could hear the surf breaking on the rocks of the western shore. He was tired, but he did not sleep as he had slept last night at Auray, after his condemnation. This place was too bitterly full of memories. One in particular, that of his lost friend, haunted him, and he recalled his promise to him here, where it was made—the promise he could not have kept, the promise he did not even want to keep, for he had no wish to live now. But for Mme. de Chaulnes he would be sleeping at this moment with the others, in the meadow at Auray. And yet his fury at her cruelty had died already into ashes, for she had given him this night under the stars, a night like many he had passed among the broom with his men . . . a whole lifetime ago. . . .

That he should have recognised this for a boon, and felt thankful for it, might have told Fortuné de la Vireville that the unquenchable instinct of life was not really dead in him, though he thought it was. But he was not given to self-analysis. This only he was aware of, as he lay there, that whereas at Auray he had been genuinely resigned to his fate, and would hardly have looked at the chance of escape if it had been offered to him (save perhaps for Anne's sake), now some obscure process of the mind, in stirring up a profound annoyance at the way in which he had been treated by Mme. de Chaulnes, had also stirred up the desire to live, and cheat her of her vengeance. Only now there appeared no means of putting that desire into practice.

And had Providence been as merciful as he had thought? Ah, if after all he had had a son—if he were not going down into the dust, leaving no trace and no memorial behind him! But that thought brought him face to face with the tragedy of his life. He flung his arm over his eyes, and so lay, motionless, a long time. . . . The stars moved on; the sea-wind swept, sighing, over the prone figures which would lie yet more still to-morrow, and at last La Vireville, rousing himself, came back to the present.

Should he try to save himself, this time, at his trial? There was just a chance of doing so if, as was probable, the tribunal had not the minutes of the court at Auray. Could he gull his judges with some story of his being just a Breton peasant, as his dress, or at least the chief part of it, proclaimed him? They were showing more mercy to the Chouans than to their leaders. He could take off his high boots and go barefoot, leave here in the field his sling which, though no longer white, had obviously once been a leader's scarf, untie his hair once more and wear it loose on his shoulders. Among so many, his guards would hardly notice the transformation, and his judges would not have seen him before. Was it worth trying?

Yes, for the sake of the promise to the dead, for Anne-Hilarion's sake, and because, at thirty-five, it is not easy to be twice resigned.

(2)

The military commission began its work at eight next morning. La Vireville, appearing before it at about half-past eleven, found it to consist of a captain of artillery, a sous-lieutenant and a corporal of sharp-shooters, and a sergeant, under the presidency of a chef de bataillon.

It was very soon evident that this commission, as he had hoped, had no record of the proceedings of its fellow at Auray. La Vireville's statement that he was a peasant of the Morbihan passed practically unchallenged, helped by the changes he had made in his appearance and by the Bas-Breton with which he interlarded his replies. How then had he come to be taken at Quiberon? Why, because when Hoche had driven in the Chouans from their positions on the mainland, quantities of the peaceable peasants there, as his interrogators knew, had fled to the peninsula with their families. Indeed, warming to his work as he went on, as once before on a less serious occasion at St. Valéry, here in the little bare room in Quiberon village, with his life at stake, Fortuné began in his own mind to invest his supposed family with many likely attributes, and went so far as to tell the commission that one of his brothers had been drowned in trying, most foolishly, to escape to the English fleet.

So he had not borne arms against the Republic? Ma Doué, certainly not! Nothing was further from his thoughts; he was a peaceable cultivator, and only wanted to be left alone to cultivate. He had never emigrated? Dame, no! Why should he leave his family, his parish, and his recteur?