Page:The Works of Honoré de Balzac Volume 29.djvu/69

Rh "All right, curmudgeon," said Clef-des-Cœurs. "Be off to your Holy Virgin and get your supperDidn't he come back and say to our faces, 'Long live the Tyrant,' when we thought it was all over with him?"

"Here, sir," said Beau-Pied; "here are the brigand's papers."

"Look here, though," cried Clef-des-Cœurs; "here's a fellow been enlisted by the Saints above; he wears their badge here on his chest!"

Hulot and some others made a group round the Chouan's naked body, and saw upon the dead man's breast a flaming heart tattooed in a bluish color, a token that the wearer had been initiated into the Brotherhood of the Sacred Heart. Under the symbol Hulot made out "Marie Lambrequin," evidently the Chouan's own name.

"You see that, Clef-des-Cœurs?" asked Beau-Pied. "Well, you would guess away for a century and never find out what that part of his accoutrements means."

"How should I know about the Pope's uniforms?" replied Clef-des-Cœurs.

"You good-for-nothing flint-crusher, will you never be any wiser? Can't you see that they promised the chap there that he should come to life again? He painted his gizzard so as to be known by it." There was some ground for the witticism. Hulot himself could not help joining in the general laughter that followed.

By this time Merle had buried the dead, and the wounded had been laid in the carts as carefully as might be. The other soldiers formed in a double file, one on either side of the improvised ambulance wagons, and in this manner they went down the other side of the mountain, the outlook over Maine before their eyes, and the lovely valley of the Pèlerine, which rivals that of the Couësnon. Hulot and his two friends Merle and Gérard followed slowly after the men, wishing that they might, without further mishap, reach Ernée, where the wounded could be attended to.

This engagement, though scarcely heard of in France,