"If General Brune with his eight thousand men, joined to the twenty thousand he has received from General Hedouville, is not sufficient, the First Consul has decided to march against you in person with one hundred thousand men."
Cadoudal smiled.
"We will try to prove to him," he said, "that we are worthy to fight against him."
"He will burn your towns."
"We shall retire to our huts."
"He will burn your huts."
"We will live in the woods."
"Reflect, general."
"Do me the honor to remain here forty-eight hours, colonel, and you will see that my reflections are already made."
"I am tempted to accept."
"Only, colonel, don't ask for more than I can give; a night's sleep beneath a thatched roof or wrapped in a cloak under an oak tree, a horse to follow me, and a safe-guard when you leave me."
"I accept."
"Have I your word, colonel, that you will not interfere with any orders I give, and will do nothing to defeat the surprises I may attempt?"
"I am too curious to see for that. You have my word, general."
"Whatever takes place before your eyes?"
"Whatever takes place before my eyes, I renounce the role of actor and confine myself wholly to that of spectator. I wish to say to the First Consul: 'I have seen.'"
Cadoudal smiled.
"Well, you shall see," said he.
At that moment the door opened, and two peasants brought in a table all laid, on which stood a smoking bowl of cabbage-soup and a piece of lard; an enormous pot of cider, just drawn from the cask, was foaming over the edges of the jug between two glasses. A few buckwheat cakes served as a desert to this modest repast. The table was laid for two.
"You see, Monsieur de Montrevel, that my lads hoped you would do me the honor to sup with me."
"Faith! they were not far wrong. I should have asked for supper, had you not invited me; and I might have been forced to seize some had you not invited me."
"Then fall to!"
The young colonel sat down gayly.
"Excuse the repast I offer you," said Cadoudal; "unlike your generals, I don't make prize money; my soldiers feed me. Have you anything else for us, Brise-Bleu?"
"A chicken fricassee, general."
"That's your dinner, Monsieur de Montrevel."
"A feast! Now, I have but one fear, general."
"What is it?"
"All will go well for the eating, but when it comes to drinking--"
"Don't you like cider? The devil! I'm sorry; cider or water, that's my cellar."
"Oh! that's not it; but whose health are we going to drink?"
"Is that all, sir?" said Cadoudal, with great dignity. "We will drink to the health of our common mother, France. We are serving her with different minds, but, I hope, the same hearts. To _France_, Monsieur,"
said Cadoudal, filling the two glasses.
"To _France_, general!" replied Roland, clinking his glass against that of Georges.
And both gayly reseated themselves, their consciences at rest, and attacked the soup with appetites that were not yet thirty years old.
CHAPTER XXXIII. THE LAW OF RETALIATION
"Now, general," said Roland, when supper was over and the two young men, with their elbows on the table and their legs stretched out before the blazing fire, began to feel that comfortable sensation that comes of a meal which youth and appetite have seasoned. "Now for your promise to show me things which I can report to the First Consul."
"You promised, remember, not to object to them."
"Yes, but I reserve the right, in case you wound my conscience too severely, to withdraw."
"Only give time to throw a saddle on the back of your horse, or of mine, if yours is too tired, colonel, and you are free."
"Very good."
"As it happens," said Cadoudal, "events will serve you. I am here, not only as general, but as judge, though it is long since I have had a case to try. You told me, colonel, that General Brune was at Nantes; I knew it. You told me his advanced guard was only twelve miles away, at La Roche-Bernard; I knew that also. But a thing you may not know is that this advanced guard is not commanded by a soldier like you and me, but by citizen Thomas Milliere, Commissioner of the Executive authorities.
Another thing of which you may perhaps be ignorant is that citizen Thomas Milliere does not fight like us with cannon, guns, bayonets, pistols and swords, but with an instrument invented by your Republican philanthropists, called the guillotine."
"It is impossible, sir," cried Roland, "that under the First Consul any one can make that kind of war."
"Ah! let us understand each other, colonel. I don't say that the First Consul makes it; I say it is made in his name."
"And who is the scoundrel that abuses the authority given him, to make war with a staff of executioners?"
"I have told you his name; he is called Thomas Milliere. Question whom you please, colonel, and throughout all Vendee and Brittany you'll hear but one voice on that man. From the day of the rising in Vendee and Brittany, now six years ago, Milliere has been, always and everywhere, the most active agent of the Terror. For him the Terror did not end with Robespierre. He denounced to his superiors, or caused to be denounced to himself, the Breton and Vendean soldiers, their parents, friends, brothers, sisters, wives, even the wounded and dying; he shot or guillotined them all without a trial. At Daumeray, for instance, he left a trail of blood behind him which is not yet, can never be, effaced.
More than eighty of the inhabitants were slaughtered before his eyes.
Sons were killed in the arms of their mothers, who vainly stretched those bloody arms to Heaven imploring vengeance. The successive pacifications of Brittany and Vendee have never slaked the thirst for murder which burns his entrails. He is the same in 1800 that he was in 1793. Well, this man--"
Roland looked at the general.