Page:The Works of Honoré de Balzac Volume 29.djvu/49

Rh a push so that he went down again on to the slope where he had been sitting. From that moment the chief of demi-brigade never took his eyes off the impassive Breton.

"It is time to let you know, my friends," said Hulot, addressing the two officers in low tones, "that they have shut up shop down there. A mighty rummaging has been set up in the Assemblies, and the Directory in consequence has sent a few strokes of the broom our way. Those Pentarchs of Directors—call them Pantaloons, it is better French—have just lost a good sword; Bernadotte has had enough of it."

"Who succeeds him?" asked Gérard eagerly.

"Milet-Mureau, an old pedant. They have pitched on an awkward time for setting numbskulls to pilot us. There are English rockets going up on the coasts: these cockchafers of Vendeans and Chouans about: and the fellows at the back of those marionettes yonder have cleverly selected the moment when we are about to succumb."

"What?" asked Merle.

"Our armies are beaten back at every point," said Hulot, lowering his voice more and more. "The Chouans have intercepted our couriers twice already; my own dispatches and the last decrees issued only reached me by a special express that Bernadotte sent just as he resigned his place in the ministry. Personal friends, fortunately, have written to me about this crisis. Fouché has found out that traitors in Paris have advised the tyrant Louis XVIII. to send a leader to his dupes in the interior. Some think that Barras is a traitor to the Republic. In short, Pitt and the princes have sent a ci-devant over here; a strong man and a capable leader, he intends, by combining the efforts of Vendeans and Chouans, to teach the Republic to respect them. The fellow has landed in Morbihan; I knew it before any one else, and I advised those rascals in Paris of his arrival. The Gars he has chosen to call himself. All those animals," and he pointed to Marche-à-Terre, "fit themselves up with names that would give any honest patriot the colic if you called him by them. But our man is here in this country, and the appearance of