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Along the wild, rugged shore, a little way from Kromlaix, was an immense cavern of crimson granite, hung with gleaming moss, and washed by the roaring tides of the sea.
"Rohan Gwenfern!" cried the sergeant, in a voice that rang like a trumpet through the length of the town hall. No one answered. The crowd of young Kromlaix men looked at each other in consternation. Was the handsomest, the strongest, and the most daring lad in their village a coward? It was the dark year of 1813, when Napoleon was draining France of all its manhood.
When Napoleon awoke, a long knife was lying at his feet; but he heeded it not, and little dreamt that a few minutes ago it had been pointed at his heart. Ah, Rohan Gwenfern had done well to leave the mighty emperor in the hands of God, and go back, a wild, tattered, mad beggar to his sweetheart Marcelle, in the little Breton village of Kromlaix.
It is true that she had often heard Gwenfern say that he loathed war; but many other men of Kromlaix had said the same thing; and yet, when the hour came, and they were called to serve in the Grand Army, they had obeyed. "Look, Rohan!" she cried, holding up in her hand a rosette with a long, coloured streamer. "Look! I have brought this for you."
Rohan Gwenfern, who had taken a solemn oath that he would never go forth to slay his fellow-men at the bidding of Napoleon, whom he regarded as a horrible, murderous monster, found himself, when he returned to Kromlaix late that evening, in the sorry position of King of the Conscripts.
Even the only sons of poor widowed women, such as Rohan Gwenfern was, were no longer exempted from conscription. Having lost half a million men amid the snows of Russia, Napoleon had called for 200,000 more soldiers, and the little Breton fishing village of Kromlaix had to provide twenty-five recruits. "Rohan Gwenfern!" cried the sergeant again.
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