“He loved her!” said Madame du Gua, sarcastically. “Follow him, Monsieur de Fontaine, and keep him company; he will be as irritating as a fly if we let him sulk.”
She went to a window which looked on the courtyard to endeavor to see Marie’s body. There, by the last gleams of the sinking moon, she caught sight of the coach being rapidly driven down the avenue of apple-trees. Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s veil was fluttering in the wind. Madame du Gua, furious at the sight, left the room hurriedly. The marquis, standing on the portico absorbed in gloomy thought, was watching about a hundred and fifty Chouans, who, having divided their booty in the gardens, were now returning to finish the cider and the rye-bread provided for the Blues. These soldiers of a new species, on whom the monarchy was resting its hopes, dispersed into groups. Some drank the cider; others, on the bank before the portico, amused themselves by flinging into the lake the dead bodies of the Blues, to which they fastened stones. This sight, joined to the other aspects of the strange scene,—the fantastic dress, the savage expressions of the barbarous and uncouth gars,—was so new and so amazing to Monsieur de Fontaine, accustomed to the nobler and better-regulated appearance of the Vendean troops, that he seized the occasion to say to the Marquis de Montauran, “What do you expect to do with such brutes?”
“Not very much, my dear count,” replied the Gars.
“Will they ever be fit to manoeuvre before the enemy?”
“Never.”
“Can they understand or execute an order?”
“No.”
“Then what good will they be to you?”
“They will help me to plunge my sword into the entrails of the Republic,” replied the marquis in a thundering voice. “They will give me Fougeres in three days, and all Brittany in ten! Monsieur,” he added in a gentler voice, “start at once for La Vendee; if d’Auticamp, Suzannet, and the Abbe Bernier will act as rapidly as I do, if they’ll not negotiate with the First Consul, as I am afraid they will” (here he wrung the hand of the Vendean chief) “we shall be within reach of Paris in a fortnight.”
“But the Republic is sending sixty thousand men and General Brune against us.”