"They will use it this time," Landri replied; "we have been warned. It is logical. Either the chasseurs or we will have to serve. Those two regiments contain a considerable number of people who bear names 'with currents of air,' one of whom is that same Comte de Claviers-Grandchamp, who 'works,' who 'treats people well,' who 'has all the qualities of a leader of men.' It is an excellent opportunity to break his ribs and those of some others of his sort! The pretext is all ready: the two churches to be inventoried are those of Hugueville-en-Plaine, and the Sanctuary of Notre-Dame de Montmartin. In the former there is an old priest, revered for fifty leagues around, who has declared from the pulpit that he will not yield except to force. You know the devotion of the department to the Madonna of Montmartin. It is essential to act quickly, very quickly, so that the peasants may not have time to collect. Hugueville and Montmartin are a long way from Saint-Mihiel. The cavalry is already selected. If the dragoons march, as my term of duty comes at the end of the week, I have an excellent chance of being in the affair."
"My poor, poor friend!" said the young woman, enveloping the officer in a glance eloquent with the affection which she had sworn so often to conceal from him; "so you, too, are going to be forced to leave the army, of which you are so fond, and in which so fine a place is in store for you—"
"I shall not leave it," he interrupted; and his face was, as it were, frozen in an expression so stern that Valentine was amazed by it.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"That I have questioned myself closely, and have not found in my conscience what my comrades of whom you speak have found in theirs. They were believers, and I—you know too well that I have doubts which I do not parade. I shall have to execute certain orders with repugnance. But repugnance is not scruple. I shall go ahead. I shall not leave the army."
"Even if it is necessary to order your men to break down the door of a church?"
"I shall give them that order."
"You!" she cried. "You—"
"Finish your sentence," he rejoined with a still more gloomy expression. "'You, a Claviers-Grandchamp!' You dare not say the word. You think it, you have it on the end of your lips. In another than myself, you would consider it perfectly natural—you above all, who know our profession—that he should execute, in my frame of mind, a military order, and that he should see, in the taking possession of the church of Hugueville or Montmartin, simply a matter of duty to be done. In me you do not admit it. Why? Again, because of my name! And you are surprised that I break out in explosions like that of a moment ago against a servitude of which I alone know the weight!—Oh, well!" he continued, with increasing wrath, "it is precisely because I am a Claviers-Grandchamp that I don't propose to leave the army. I propose to do my duty. You hear, to do my duty, not to be a useless idler, a rich man with a most authentic coat-of-arms on his carriages. I do not propose, for the purpose of handing down an example for which I am not responsible, to undo the work of my whole youth, to become an 'Émigré' within the country, like so many of my kinsmen, so many of my friends,—like my father!"
"You are not going to deny him, him too!" she implored. "You loved him, you admired him so much!"