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Updated: June 24, 2025
Again the commander examined Marche-a-Terre, whose impassible face still gave no sign. The conscripts, their ranks closed up by an officer, now stood like a herd of cattle in the road, about a hundred feet distant from the escort, which was drawn up in line of battle. Behind them stood the rear-guard of soldiers and patriots, picked men, commanded by Lieutenant Lebrun.
"Forward!" cried Marche-a-Terre in a hoarse voice. "There's work before us." Thirty or more Chouans who were sleeping in the straw under the mangers, raised their heads, saw Marche-a-Terre on his feet, and disappeared instantly through a door which led to the garden, from which it was easy to reach the fields. When Francine left the stable she found the mail-coach ready to start.
Two soldiers, friends of those whom Marche-a-Terre had so brutally killed with the butt of his whip, stepped back a pace or two, took aim at the Chouan, whose fixed eyes did not blink at the muzzles of their guns, fired at short range, and brought him down. When they approached the dead body to strip it, the dying man found strength to cry out loudly, "Vive le roi!"
Die without confession and be damned, for you haven't taken the sacrament for a year." This insult so incensed the Chouan that he turned pale and a low growl came from his chest as he aimed in turn at Marche-a-Terre.
I shall be ready for them," she added in a deeper tone of voice and after a slight pause. At a distance of three or four gunshots from the plateau, now abandoned, a little scene was taking place which was not uncommon in those days on the high-roads. After leaving the little village of La Pelerine, Pille-Miche and Marche-a-Terre again stopped the turgotine at a dip in the road.
The abbe politely returned to her, with an equivocal manner, the sum he had received; then he followed the young leader who took the by-way through which he had come. Before following them the lady made a sign to Marche-a-Terre, who came to her. "Advance towards Mortagne," she said to him in a low voice.
The one that was least wounded supported his comrade, whose blood was moistening the earth. The two poor fellows were half-way down the slope when Marche-a-Terre showed his ugly face, and took so true an aim that both Blues fell together and rolled heavily into the ditch.
The lake, at the edge of which Marche-a-Terre had shown his head, where Madame du Gua had seen him, joined the moat in misty curves, sometimes broad as ponds, in other places narrow as the artificial streamlets of a park. The steep bank, washed by its waters, lay a few rods from the window.
Marche-a-Terre went through the same process seven or eight times silently, as if the powder had power to change the current of his thoughts. Suddenly he flung the horn to Pille-Miche with a gesture of despair, and caught up a gun which was hidden in the straw. "Seven or eight shakes at once! I suppose you think that costs nothing!" said the stingy Pille-Miche.
Madame du Gua looked about her with some distrust; she saw the postilion leading his horses to a stable in the wing of the chateau which was opposite to the bank where Marche-a-Terre was hiding; Francine, with her back to her, was going towards the two lovers, who at that moment had forgotten the whole earth.
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