Marie’s wheel, or the broken snatches of song with which she varied the rond-rond and enlivened the pleasant, monotonous labor; he knew she was there, but her presence was no more hindrance to him than the sunshine that was streaming unbidden through the window, and filling the little room with warmth and brightness.
Suddenly the rond-rond ceased, Marie looked up, and fixed her eyes on some distant object along on the road. Then she stood up, and said hurriedly:
“Mon oncle! mon oncle!”
“Well, my child?” answered the curé abstractedly, without pausing from his work.
“I see horsemen galloping toward the village. Sont-ce les bleus?”
The word made the curé start like the touch of a spring. He dropped his pen and was beside her in an instant. They looked out steadily toward the dust-cloud that was advancing rapidly, and for one minute neither spoke. Then the curé exclaimed joyfully:
“No! They are Charette’s men!”
And so they were. But none the less was there cause for Marie’s cheek to grow pale, and the heart of the old pastor to beat with a great emotion. They knew what brought these Royalist soldiers to Chamtocé. Charette wanted men, and he had sent here to levy them. In less than an hour, every available man in the village was up on the place for inspection. The difficulty was whom to take and whom to refuse, for the brave fellows whose exploits and valor won for them later the sobriquet of peuple de géants (race of giants) were all clamoring to be enrolled under the king’s flag, and to go forth and die for the king’s cause.
For the first time to-day since that outbreak that had bound them in closer brotherhood, François and
Gaston quarrelled. Both wanted to go, both were equally good for the service; the recruiting officer, unable to choose between them, declared they must decide for themselves. The only way to do this was to defer it to the curé. They walked off to the church, where the old man was speaking plain, soul-stirring words of encouragement and exhortation to a throng of men and women, the men exulting, the women weeping, but all of one mind and heart in the cause, and ready to give their best and dearest to serve under the banner of the fleur-de-lis.