Page:The Works of Honoré de Balzac Volume 29.djvu/56

28 "The chap isn't up to everything," he said to Gérard. "Aha! it is not so easy to read a Chouan's face; but this fellow's wish to exhibit his intrepidity has betrayed him. If he had shammed fright, Gérard, I should have taken him for a nincompoop, you see; and there would have been a pair of us, he and I. I had come to the end of my tether. Ah, we shall be attacked! But let them come; I am ready now!"

The old soldier rubbed his hands triumphantly when he had muttered these words, and looked maliciously at Marche-à-Terre; then he locked his arms over his chest, took his stand in the middle of the road between his two favorite officers, and awaited the result of the measures he had taken. Sure of the issue, he looked his men over calmly.

"Oho! we are going to have a row," said Beau-Pied in a low voice; "the commandant is rubbing his hands."

Commandant Hulot and his detachment found themselves in one of those critical positions where life is really at stake, and when men of energetic character feel themselves in honor bound to show coolness and self-possession. Such times bring a man to the final test. The commandant, therefore, who knew the danger better than any of his officers, prided himself on appearing the coolest person present. With his eyes fixed alternately on the woods, the roadway, and Marche-à-Terre, he was expecting the general onslaught of the Chouans (who, as he believed, lay concealed all about them like goblins), with an unmoved face, but not without inward anguish. Just as the men's eyes were all turned upon his, slight creases appeared in the brown cheeks with the scars of smallpox upon them, the commandant screwed his lip sharply up to one side, blinked his eyes, a grimace which was understood to be a smile by his men, then he clapped Gérard on the shoulder, saying:

"Now we have time to talk. What were you going to say to me just now?"

"What new crisis have we here, commandant?"

"It is nothing new," he answered in a low voice; "all Europe has a chance against us this time. Whilst the Direc-