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Updated: May 8, 2025
They are Chouans; and I'll make sure of their quality." The door soon opened and the young man entered, holding the hand of Mademoiselle de Verneuil, whom he led to the table with an air of self-conceit that was nevertheless courteous. The devil had not allowed that hour which had elapsed since the lady's arrival to be wasted.
Suddenly the north wind swept this phantasmagoric scene and scattered the mists which laid a dew full of oxygen on the meadows. Mademoiselle de Verneuil was now able to distinguish a dark mass of men on the rocks of Fougeres. Seven or eight hundred Chouans were running like ants through the suburb of Saint-Sulpice.
Though they were now at a long distance from the fatal plateau, they could easily distinguish Marche-a-Terre and several Chouans who were again occupying it. "Double-quick, march!" cried Hulot to his men, "open your compasses and trot the steeds faster than that! Are your legs frozen?" These words drove the little troop into a rapid motion.
The commandant ordered him to choose a dozen of his compatriots who could best counterfeit the Chouans, and take them out by the Porte Saint-Leonard, so as to creep round the side of the Saint-Sulpice rocks which overlooks the valley of Couesnon and on which was the hovel of Galope-Chopine.
"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.
The voice became so lamentable that Mademoiselle de Verneuil forgot her own danger and uttered an exclamation. "Who spoke?" asked Marche-a-Terre. The Chouans looked about them with terrified eyes. These men, so brave in fight, were unable to face a ghost. Pille-Miche alone continued to listen to the promises which the flames were now extracting from his victim.
It is thought that Barras is betraying the Republic. At any rate, Pitt and the princes have sent a man, a ci-devant, vigorous, daring, full of talent, who intends, by uniting the Chouans with the Vendeans, to pluck the cap of liberty from the head of the Republic. The fellow has lately landed in the Morbihan; I was the first to hear of it, and I sent the news to those knaves in Paris.
It was after his campaign in Holland, during the autumn of 1799, that he first began to claim some military glory. He owed, however, his successes to the superior number of his troops, and to the talents of the generals and officers serving under him. Being made a Counsellor of State by Bonaparte, he was entrusted with the command of the army against the Chouans.
But he had no sooner arrived in Paris than he set to work again, and he did not fail to keep his provincial friends informed of the progress of his novel. The first thing he did was to change its title from The Stripling, to which Mme. de Pommereul had objected, to The Chouans or Brittany Thirty Years Ago, and finally settled definitely on The Last Chouan or Brittany in 1800.
This destination was pointed out to him in a commission as brigadier-general of infantry in the province of Vendee, there to lead on the fratricidal strife against the fanatical Chouans, the faithful adherents of the king.
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