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Updated: June 15, 2025
On arriving at a village he learned that the bulk of the army, instead of being behind him, had marched towards Pontorson. He was therefore forced to retrace his steps and to follow them and, on overtaking them, found that they had already carried the bridge, driven away the enemy, and occupied the town.
As soon as the latter heard that Pontorson had been carried by the Vendeans, and that they had marched to Dol, he pursued them with three thousand infantry, two hundred cavalry, and four cannon. He arrived within a short distance of Dol at six in the evening and, without waiting for the infantry to come up, charged into the town, and for a moment spread confusion among the Vendeans.
Finding that nothing could be done with them, there, Kleber drew them off; their confusion being almost converted into a rout, by the fire of about a hundred Vendeans. A council of war was held, and eighteen hundred men, with two guns, were sent to Pontorson to join Westermann's defeated division. That general was ordered to advance again, at once, upon Dol.
"I will also," continued the duke, "send word by Bontet here to those two friends of mine at Pontorson. It would be dull for you to dine alone with me, and, as the evening promises to be fine, I will ask them to be here by five o'clock, and we will have a stroll on the sands and a nearer look at the Mount before our meal. They are officers who are quartered there."
They are missed by all those who, instead of going by the picturesque and winding coast-road from Pontaubault, take the straight and dusty route nationale to Pontorson, and then turn to follow the tramway that has in recent years been extended along the causeway to the mount itself.
Had my health definitely improved, had my parents allowed me, if not actually to go down to stay at Balbec, at least to take, just once, so as to become acquainted with the architecture and landscapes of Normandy or of Brittany, that one twenty-two train into which I had so often clambered in imagination, I should have preferred to stop, and to alight from it, at the most beautiful of its towns; but in vain might I compare and contrast them; how was one to choose, any more than between individual people, who are not interchangeable, between Bayeux, so lofty in its noble coronet of rusty lace, whose highest point caught the light of the old gold of its second syllable; Vitre, whose acute accent barred its ancient glass with wooden lozenges; gentle Lamballe, whose whiteness ranged from egg-shell yellow to a pearly grey; Coutances, a Norman Cathedral, which its final consonants, rich and yellowing, crowned with a tower of butter; Lannion with the rumble and buzz, in the silence of its village street, of the fly on the wheel of the coach; Questambert, Pontorson, ridiculously silly and simple, white feathers and yellow beaks strewn along the road to those well-watered and poetic spots; Benodet, a name scarcely moored that seemed to be striving to draw the river down into the tangle of its seaweeds; Pont-Aven, the snowy, rosy flight of the wing of a lightly poised coif, tremulously reflected in the greenish waters of a canal; Quimperle, more firmly attached, this, and since the Middle Ages, among the rivulets with which it babbled, threading their pearls upon a grey background, like the pattern made, through the cobwebs upon a window, by rays of sunlight changed into blunt points of tarnished silver?
"Oh, he thought nothing of that," said Bontet easily. "The gentlemen at Pontorson know me very well: several affairs have been arranged from this house." "You ought to keep a private cemetery," said the duke with a grim smile. "The sands are there," laughed the fellow, with a wave of his hand.
And I told him what had happened, as I conceived it how that Bontet must have given shelter to Pierre, till such time as escape might be possible; but how that, when Bontet discovered that the necklace was in the inn, the two scoundrels, thinking that they might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, had determined to make another attempt to secure the coveted spoil; how, in pursuance of this scheme, Bontet had, as I believed, suppressed the duke's message to his friends at Pontorson, with the intent to attack us, as they had done, on the sands; and I added that he himself knew, better than I, what was likely to have become of the necklace in the hands of Mme.
Jumping up suddenly as though I had just chanced to notice him, I asked him if he were off to Pontorson, or, if not, had he a moment for conversation. "I am going in a few minutes, sir," he answered; "but I am at your service now." The words were civil enough, but his manner was surly and suspicious. Lighting a cigarette, I sat down on the window-sill, while he stood just outside.
The enemy were closing round them, but the capture of Pontorson deranged the plans of the Republicans. The place had been held by four thousand men and ten pieces of cannon and, as it could be approached only by a narrow defile, it was believed that it would be impossible for the Vendeans to force their way into it.
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