Merle was directed to bury the dead in a ravine; while another party of men attended to the removal of the wounded. The carts and horses of the neighborhood were put into requisition, and the suffering men were carefully laid on the clothing of the dead. Before the little column started, the National Guard of Fougeres turned over to Hulot a Chouan, dangerously wounded, whom they had captured at the foot of the slope up which his comrades had escaped, and where he had fallen from weakness.
“Thanks for your help, citizens,” said the commandant. “God’s thunder! if it hadn’t been for you, we should have had a pretty bad quarter of an hour. Take care of yourselves; the war has begun. Adieu, friends.” Then, turning to the prisoner, he asked, “What’s the name of your general?”
“The Gars.”
“Who? Marche-a-Terre?”
“No, the Gars.”
“Where does the Gars come from?”
To this question the prisoner, whose face was convulsed with suffering, made no reply; he took out his beads and began to say his prayers.
“The Gars is no doubt that young ci-devant with the black cravat,—sent by the tyrant and his allies Pitt and Coburg.”
At that words the Chouan raised his head proudly and said: “Sent by God and the king!” He uttered the words with an energy which exhausted his strength. The commandant saw the difficulty of questioning a dying man, whose countenance expressed his gloomy fanaticism, and he turned away his head with a frown. Two soldiers, friends of those whom Marche-a-Terre had so brutally killed with the butt of his whip, stepped back a pace or two, took aim at the Chouan, whose fixed eyes did not blink at the muzzles of their guns, fired at short range, and brought him down. When they approached the dead body to strip it, the dying man found strength to cry out loudly, “Vive le roi!”
“Yes, yes, you canting hypocrite,” cried Clef-des-Coeurs; “go and make your report to that Virgin of yours. Didn’t he shout in our faces, ‘Vive le roi!’ when we thought him cooked?”