M. le Chevalier, sitting on the edge of the table, with both hands to his head, now addressed this being as "Grain d'Orge," and said a few words to him in a strange language. Anne had by this time arrived at the conclusion that this was the man who had carried him, so when the lips of the being parted in what the little boy supposed to be a smile (displaying a few yellow teeth, and causing innumerable more wrinkles to appear), and it held out a large grey hand, uttering something unintelligible, Anne gathered that he was being given a friendly greeting of some kind, and with very little hesitation laid his own hand in Grain d'Orge's capacious paw.
CHAPTER XIII
Far in the Forest
(1)
"'O Richard, ô mon roi,
L'univers t'abandonne;
Sur la terre il n'y a que moi
Qui s'intéresse à ta personne,'"
sang a clear tenor voice in the forest next morning—the once famous air out of that opera of Richard Cœur-de-Lion which had served the Royalists of three or four years ago as a rallying-cry. The singer, a fair-haired young Breton with a face of refinement and intelligence, was busy polishing his English musket. He was, or had been, a law student at Rennes, and now was one of 'Monsieur Augustin's' lieutenants. A little way off Anne-Hilarion was crouched in a patch of primroses, which he was adding one by one to the tight, hot bunch in his hand. Grain d'Orge and another Chouan of about the same standard of personal cleanliness, sitting on a fallen trunk, their muskets resting against them, regarded his labours with a wide, admiring grin. And under a beech-tree, a fresh bandage round his head, La Vireville himself lay propped on his elbows, reading and re-reading a letter. A map lay open on the ground beside him. Over this peaceful and almost pastoral scene shone the young green of April's trees and the soft blue of her sky, a setting with which the child plucking flowers was more consonant than the armed peasants. But the latter, by the attention which they paid to his movements, did not seem to find it so.
La Vireville suddenly rolled over and sat up. "Le Goffic, come here a moment, will you?"
The young Breton ceased his song, put down his weapon, and obeyed. His leader motioned to him to sit down beside him.