The Chouans approved of her speech by unanimous smiles.
“Do you see nothing in all that to make you blush?” said the young man, in a low voice. “Are you in such need of money that you must pillage on the high-road?”
“I am so eager for it, marquis, that I should put my heart in pawn if it were not already captured,” she said, smiling coquettishly. “But where did you get the strange idea that you could manage Chouans without letting them rob a few Blues here and there? Don’t you know the saying, ‘Thieving as an owl’?—and that’s a Chouan. Besides,” she said, raising her voice to be heard by the men, “it is just; haven’t the Blues seized the property of the Church, and our own?”
Another murmur, very different from the growl with which the Chouans had answered their leader, greeted these words. The young man’s face grew darker; he took the young lady aside and said in the annoyed tone of a well-bred man, “Will those gentlemen be at La Vivetiere on the appointed day?”
“Yes,” she replied, “all of them, the Claimant, Grand-Jacques, and perhaps Ferdinand.”
“Then allow me to return there. I cannot sanction such robbery. Yes, madame, I call it robbery. There may be honor in being robbed, but—”
“Well, well,” she said, interrupting him, “then I shall have your share of the booty, and I am much obliged to you for giving it up to me; the extra sum will be extremely useful, for my mother has delayed sending me money, so that I am almost destitute.”
“Adieu!” cried the marquis.
He turned away, but the lady ran after him.
“Why won’t you stay with me?” she said, giving him the look, half-despotic, half-caressing, with which women who have a right to a man’s respect let him know their wishes.