Page:The Works of Honoré de Balzac Volume 29.djvu/43

Rh glance at the suspected herald of an approaching massacre, and noticed that his hair, his blouse, and his goatskin breeches were covered with thorns, bits of wood, scraps of bramble and leaves, as if the Chouan had come through the thickets for a long distance. He looked significantly at his adjutant Gérard, who was standing beside him, gripped his hand, and said in a low voice:

"We went out to look for wool, and we shall go back again shorn."

The astonished officers eyed one another in silence.

Here we must digress a little, so that those stay-at-home people who are accustomed to believe nothing because they never see anything for themselves, may be induced to sympathize with the fears of the commandant Hulot, for these people would be capable of denying the existence of a Marche-à-Terre and of the Western peasants who behaved with such heroism in those times.

The word gars, pronounced gâ, is a relic of the Celtic tongue. It passed into French from the Bas-Breton, and of all words in the language that we speak to-day in France, this one preserves the oldest traditions. The gais was the principal weapon of the Gaëls or Gauls ; gaisdé meant armed, gais meant valor, and gas force. The close similarity proves that the word gars is connected with these expressions in the language of our ancestors. The word corresponds to the Latin word vir, a man; the significance at the root of virtus, strength or courage. The apology for this dissertation lies in the fact that the word is a part of our national history, and this possibly may reinstate such words as gars, garçon, garçonette, garce, garcette, in the good graces of some persons who banish them all from conversation as uncouth expressions ; they come of a warlike origin for all that, and will turn up now and again in the course of this narrative. "C'est une fameuse garce!" was the little appreciated eulogium which Mme. de Staël received in a little canton of the Vendomois, where she spent some of her days in exile.

The Gaul has left deeper traces of his character in Brit-