Book II Chapter 8 The Marquis of Carabas by Rafael Sabatini
LA PREVALAYE
It was on the afternoon of the second day after that when, having covered over a hundred miles, he rode, a weary man, into the forest of La Noué, to be instantly held up by two armed Chouans, who seemed to rise out of the ground.
He announced himself an emissary of the Comte Joseph in quest of the Chevalier de Tinténiac.
"He is not here."
"Where is he?"
"We will conduct you to someone who will tell you." The tone made a threat of the promise. "Dismount!"
They blindfolded him, and one of them led him forward on foot for a considerable distance; the other followed with his horse, and thrice as they went forward he heard echoing through the forest the owl-cry.
When at last sight was restored to him, he was in that vast clearing whither he had first been brought by Cormatin and Tinténiac. He beheld there an assembly of some three or four hundred men, some seated at meat, others at work upon their arms or accoutrements, others merely idling. Farther off, on the clearing's edge, some scores of hobbled, shaggy Breton ponies were cropping the meagre herbage.
In the low doorway of the charcoal burner's hut stood a slight little man in a hussar jacket with white facings, whose brilliant dark eyes observed the approach keenly and questioningly until recognition dawned in them. Then he moved forward nimbly to meet Quentin, peremptorily waving back his conductors. It was St. Regent.
"Monsieur de Chavaray! God save you!"
"Well found!" was Quentin's answering greeting. "I am seeking the Chevalier de Tinténiac."
The dark eyes twinkled in the brown roguish face that was wrinkled like a withered apple. "Faith, sir, to find him you'll need to cross the sea. The Chevalier is in England with the Comte Joseph."
"When did he go?"
"A month since."
The answer dashed the hope in which the question had been asked. "Then he went too soon." And in a few swift words, Quentin told him of the treachery preparing in Rennes by Cormatin.
The humour died out of the Chouan's face. Unceremoniously he took Quentin by the arm, and drew him towards the hut. "Georges had better hear this tale."
Within the dingy little chamber the corpulent Cadoudal lay wrapped in slumber. Startled out of it by St. Regent's shout, he sat up grunting, instinctively reaching for his musket. "What the devil now?"
"A friend. Monsieur de Chavaray."
"Peste! Why will you yell so? I thought it was the Blues." He heaved himself to his feet.
"Well met, Cadoudal. I am a bearer of ill-tidings. But let me wet my throat before I begin. Have you anything to drink?"
"Cider." St. Regent went to fill a can at a barrel in the corner. "Good, honest Breton cider of last autumn, with an edge to it."
Quentin gratefully drained the can, wearily lowered himself to a stool by the plain deal table, stretched his booted legs, and told the tale that he had learnt from Hoche.
Their amazement culminated in a boisterous refusal from Cadoudal to believe it. "They're Republican lies," he concluded.
"Hoche does not suggest a liar to me," said Quentin.
"Then he's a madman."
"He does not suggest that either."
St. Regent intervened, a thoughtful frown on his wizened face. "The meeting at Rennes for next Wednesday is, at least, a fact."
"But not the purpose of it," Cadoudal stormed back. "God of God! The armistice, too, is a fact. But who sought it?"
"Cormatin, says Hoche."
"He lies. Are they not liars all, these foul Democrats? The facts refute them. Wasn't it they who begged for the armistice? Theirs is the desperate need. The Republic is crumbling, and driven to make terms. The poor Republican troops which the Convention can spare for the West, move through it at their peril. And they're so well aware of it that they move only when they must. The rest of the time they're huddled together, a flock of panic-stricken sheep that smell the wolves. Is it for the wolves to go bleating to them of peace?"
"No. But a wolf who saw profit in it for himself might do so. According to Hoche, Cormatin is to earn a million livres by this."
Cadoudal's rejection of this was even more indignant. "Are we to believe that of a man appointed by the Comte Joseph to represent him? Do you think that a man whose talents have built up this great organization would commit the childish error of appointing such a Major-General?"
St. Regent, however, was less confident: "All traitors owe their opportunity to the trust reposed in them. And in these days . . . Bah! Who would have believed that Charette, the most knightly of the Royalist Generals, would make submission to the Republic?"
"What is not yet so well known," Quentin told them, "is that that, too, is the work of Monsieur de Cormatin."
"Hoche will have told you that," scoffed Cadoudal.
"We might dispute like this for ever," said St. Regent. "Let us go and see for ourselves what's happening."
"Why, so we shall, at Rennes, on Wednesday, when we come to hear what the patauds have to propose. If it should be that we are to recognize their obscene Republic, then--God of my life!--they'll discover that they waste their time. Are the Chouans in defeat, that they should submit to the enemy? Haven't we sworn to fight the battle of Throne and Altar to triumph or to death? Are we to betray that oath at the very hour in which the Republic is agonizing, and the exhausted people, from one end of France to the other, pray only for the restoration of the monarchy? When the English help arrives with Monsieur de Puisaye, such an army will rise out of the ground as the world has never seen."
"It is not necessary to talk so much, Georges," said St. Regent. "We are going to Rennes."
To the fair city of Rennes they came on the eve of that Wednesday of late April, with a bodyguard of a hundred Chouans, openly displaying the white cockade in their round hats and the emblem of the Sacred Heart on the breast of their jackets.
They found the city crowded, and a festive exhilaration everywhere, at the prospect of a cessation of hostilities and a restoration of peace to the distracted country-side.
St. Regent found amusement in the spectacle of Chouans, in goat-skins or iron-grey jackets, drinking with blue-coated Republicans, and of the white cockade in such friendly cheek-by-jowl with the tricolour, and he laughed to hear the new version of an emasculated Marseillaise being sung in the streets. Cadoudal, who lacked his comrade's humorous outlook, glowered upon this ubiquitous fraternizing of Royalist and Republican. It filled him with foreboding. Most ferocious was his glance when Republican officers saluted them as they passed. It was, he complained, no sort of spirit in which to prepare to cut each other's throat.
They moved hither and thither in quest of Cormatin, who was nowhere to be found. They learnt at last that he was at La Prevalaye, a château on the banks of the Vilaine, some three or four miles out of the town, where they would also find the Royalist chiefs summoned for the morrow's conference.
They slept that night at their inn in Rennes, and betimes on the morrow they made their way to La Prevalaye. There they found some hundreds of Chouans encamped, under their white standards, in the grounds of the château, in tents supplied by the Republic, and lavishly entertained at the Republic's charges. Drawn from the ends of the Morbihan, from the moorlands of Paimpont and Lavin, from the depths of the forests of Camors, of Vernet, and the like, these men who from the distant days of La Rouërie had scarcely ever left their burrows and fastnesses but so as to deliver battle, were a little dazed and intoxicated by the honours paid them now that they moved openly and without furtiveness.
Within the lordly manor of La Prevalaye, that once had housed Henri IV, the chiefs had been assembling for some days: gentlemen of family, many of whom had been schooled in arms in the King's regiments or in the Royal Navy. Here they were received and entertained by Hoche's staff and Republican officers of the Army of Cherbourg, and feasted on a scale that spared no expenditure of public funds.
Between Royalists and Republicans, La Prevalaye was housing close upon four hundred men, all displaying that fraternal spirit which Cormatin on the one side, and Hoche on the other, had laboured to inspire. Hoche himself was present with his staff, the gay, debonair Humbert conspicuously solicitous of the comfort of their Royalist guests.
Cormatin, aglow with satisfaction at the excellent prospects of his pacificatory schemes, moved smiling and genial, his portliness tight in a grey frock, with a high stiff collar about his white cravat, a white sash girding his middle, white plumes to his hat, the Sacred Heart on his breast, and a chaplet threaded through his buttonhole.
Nor were ladies lacking to complete the social amenities, although in this respect there was no Republican contribution, unless the Vicomtesse de Bellanger were so to be considered from her now flagrantly open attachment to the splendid Hoche. A score of other noble ladies, wives and sisters of some of the Royalist chiefs, who hitherto had wooed security in obscurity, rejoiced in this occasion of recapturing something of the gay days of the old departed order.
A glimpse of all this, when on his way to the summoned conference, went far towards dispelling Cadoudal's obstinate disbelief in the mischief that was planned. Hence the scowl on his round, red face, when he came, with his rolling gait, to be deafened in the great conference chamber by the clatter of conversation from more than a hundred tongues. Known to most, he was familiarly greeted on every hand. St. Regent, too, numbered many acquaintances. Quentin, completely unknown, attracted little attention. He remained aloof, observant, whilst others continued to arrive, until the gathering in that spacious, bare and rather dilapidated hall must have numbered fully a hundred and fifty.
A score or so were of the agrarian type, like Cadoudal, loud-spoken, rude of dress and manner. The remainder were gentlemen, many of whom revealed in their carriage their military antecedents; some displayed it even in their dress, the close-fitting frocks, high collars and deep cravats. Many who, like Cormatin, flitted hither and thither among the groups, wore the steel-grey with black facings that was the recognized Royalist uniform, and were girt with the white Royalist sash. Others affected the short, Chouan jacket over gaily coloured waistcoats of red or green, and some wore the wide Breton breeches above leather gaiters.
Beyond the white cockade on his sugar-loaf hat, Quentin displayed none of the Royalist insignia, and in his fawn riding-coat, buckskins and boots, with his chestnut hair severely tied, he had a sense of being on that account conspicuous. St. Regent, however, seemed to supply by his presence beside him a sufficient answer to inquisitive glances.
Cadoudal could be seen striving to cleave a way through the press to Cormatin, but being ever detained by those whom he sought to pass. He had not succeeded in reaching him when the Baron moved briskly and purposefully to the long table ranged at the hall's end. With him went a group of a half-dozen officers composing his staff, in one of whom Quentin recognized Boishardi, to confirm the tale that this Royalist, famed the most gallant of them all, was in alliance with the pacifists.
Cormatin reached the middle chair of those set beyond the table, and with the butt of a pistol rapped sharply for silence. Then, waving the members of his staff, right and left, to their seats, he, himself, remained standing.
The chatter died down, the general movement was arrested, and Quentin found Cadoudal once more beside him.
In that attentive stillness Cormatin began to speak, his manner confident, his voice strong and pleasantly modulated. "Messieurs the officers of the Royal and Catholic Army, we assemble to-day for what should be our final conference, and at the conclusion it will be the duty of this assembly to appoint ten of its members to convey, to-morrow at La Mabilais, the result of our deliberations to the ten representatives who have been sent by the National Convention to conclude with us the terms of this pacification."
He paused a moment before proceeding. "The desire for peace must be present in the hearts of all. For three years now we have seen this fair land of the West, this Brittany, Maine, Normandy and Anjou, ravaged by fratricidal war. We have seen entire hamlets, villages and even townships put to the sword and then razed to the ground. We have seen the cattle driven from the land and the fields laid waste, and famine added to the other horrors by which it was hoped to bend us into surrender. All failed. We were not suppressed, because we are unsuppressible."
A sudden explosion of applause instead of encouraging seemed to disconcert him. Nevertheless, recovering, he continued.
"But if it has not suppressed us, it has brought, is still bringing and will continue to bring, desolation to the land; and we should not be worthy of the name of Frenchmen if we could look on this with indifference. We may perhaps have to admit that the Republicans have set us an example by proposing the armistice which enables us to meet them in a brotherly spirit. . . ."
Here Cadoudal, who for some moments had been restive at Quentin's side, harshly interrupted him. "We are brothers to no regicides."
Upon that followed a scene that showed how divided were the opinions. Yet if many applauded the interruption, there were more to resent it and to call for silence from its supporters.
Cormatin waited patiently until order was restored.
"Suffer me, sirs, to have done without interruption. Then let frank discussion follow. I was saying that the Republicans, weary of this bloodshed and this havoc, have called this armistice in the hope of an accommodation that will lift the horrors of civil strife from the land. They meet us in a spirit which to me, as Major-General of the Royal and Catholic Army, seems generous.
"Monsieur de Boishardi, whom you see at my side, and in whom you all recognize Brittany's stoutest and most gallant champion of the Royalist cause, is newly returned from the Vendée, whither he went in an endeavour to induce Stofflet to attend this conference. Stofflet will not leave his army. But, at least, he has not refused to be bound by the treaty we are to make."
"Has he consented?" someone asked.
"Presently Monsieur de Boishardi himself will tell you of Stofflet's attitude. I have no cause to doubt that he will be ready to lay down his arms on my recommendation, uttered as it is with the authority of the Princes, whose representative I am."
"That is false!"
The interjection, sharp and loud, came from Quentin.
There was a startled movement through the assembly. Chairs scraped and ground at Cormatin's table. His aides-de-camp were on their feet, their glances angrily searching the quarter whence the words had come. Upon a silence almost of awe rang the challenging voice of Cormatin.
"Who said that?"
"I did." There happened to be a chair near Quentin. He reached for it and mounted it, so that he might be seen by all. Muttered inquiries into his identity rippled through the room.
"Do you give me the lie, sir?" Cormatin demanded, his face empurpled.
"Directly and categorically."
"And there you are," said Cadoudal below him.
"By God . . ." Cormatin was beginning. Then he checked. "Who are you, sir?"
It was the question in the eyes of a hundred faces turned towards Quentin.
"I am plain to behold. I trust that you recognize me, for then you will recognize my right to speak as I have spoken. You were the representative of Monsieur de Puisaye. I say 'you were,' because from the moment that you disobey his orders and betray his trust as you are doing, you cease to represent him."
Now Cormatin recognized him. Pale with anger, mastering himself by an effort, he named him. "You are Chavaray."
"Puisaye's emissary to you, who last brought you his orders from England. To those orders your present activities prove you false. And you magnify the offence when you let it be understood that you act with the authority of the Princes. It was Monsieur de Puisaye, who, acting with that authority, sent you orders which precluded any accommodation with the regicides."
He could add no more because of the sudden turmoil about him.
The secret resentment of the proceedings in the hearts of the majority lulled hitherto by the guile with which Cormatin or his aides had worked upon them separately, now exploded.
The Baron, his staff standing with him and seeking to calm the hubbub, banged the table again and again with his pistol-butt. Above the din his voice, grown shrill with anger, rang out: "Hear me, messieurs! Hear me!"
When at last they consented to be silenced, he spoke with assumed calm and dignity, suppressing his distress.
"What there is of personal between Monsieur de Chavaray and me can wait for the moment. The occasion is too grave, my responsibility too heavy to suffer interruption by any personal insult. I am accused of being false to my orders from Monsieur de Puisaye. So rash is this accusation that it comes before I have even announced the terms of the proposed accommodation. Before I announce them, let me add that even at the risk of being charged with neglect of Monsieur de Puisaye's instructions from England, I, as the fully empowered Major-General here on the spot, must claim to be the judge of what is profitable and expedient to the cause we serve."
"The good man perorates too much," grumbled St. Regent.
It was evidently a fairly general opinion, for from every side rose the cry: "The terms! The terms!"
"I am coming to them. The Convention offers a general amnesty to all who have been in arms against the Republic. It will likewise accord an amnesty to all émigrés who have returned in defiance of their proscription. Freedom of worship is to be restored, and the ban to be lifted from those priests who have not taken the constitutional oath. The Republican troops are to be withdrawn from the West, and indemnities on a generous scale are to be paid to those whose property has suffered in the course of the civil war.
"That is what the Republic offers us for the peace that all honest men must ardently desire, and they are terms which it is my considered opinion we should best serve the country by accepting."
He paused there, and the silence was such as to encourage him that the generosity of the terms had impressed the audience. Then a voice asked for something more.
"You have told us what the sansculottes offer. You have not said what they demand in return."
"That follows logically. That we lay down our arms, recognizing the Republican Government."
"Is it that what you urge this meeting to accept?" asked the same voice.
"It is, and that after very careful consideration. If you agree, as I hope you will, it only remains to elect the deputation that is to wait upon the Conventionals at La Mabilais tomorrow, to sign the treaty."
Quentin looked for another explosion. It did not come. Although downcast by the proposal, which hardly took them by surprise, seeing that they had been privately wrought upon beforehand, yet there was no angry opposition. Already the assembly was breaking into groups, and the hum of discussion growing louder; already Cormatin had resumed his seat, when again Quentin raised his voice.
"Have you the authority of the Comte de Puisaye for the recommendation?"
In the stir that followed, he perceived that some there were who resented this re-opening of a question which they accounted that the Baron had already answered. Of this, the Baron in his reply coldly reminded him.
"You have answered, sir," Quentin rejoined, "that you have no such authority. Then let me ask by what right you make it."
"By the right of my own judgment. For the rest, sir, the decision lies with this assembly, as it still must if Monsieur de Puisaye, himself, were in my place."
"But you seek to guide that decision against all that Monsieur de Puisaye could wish. You betray your trust."
"I shall be happy to discuss that privately with you afterwards."
"You shall discuss it publicly now."
Quentin perceived from the hostile, impatient murmurs, that the assembly was not in sympathy with him. Impulsively he climbed his chair again, to address not Cormatin, but the entire gathering.
"Messieurs! Whilst Monsieur de Cormatin is here urging you to make a treaty of peace with the regicides, to lay down your arms and recognize the Republic, in England Monsieur de Puisaye, in whose place he claims to speak, is raising reinforcements for the Royalist cause. Any moment now may see the sailing of the ships which Monsieur de Puisaye has induced the British Government to dispatch to Brittany with arms, munitions of war, the regiments composed of émigrés, reinforced by British troops and commanded by one of the Princes of the Blood.
"Has Monsieur de Cormatin informed you of this before urging you to enter into this treaty of peace, which I here denounce as a betrayal?"
Cormatin, on his feet again, was again banging the table.
"Silence me that Rhodomont," he clamoured, "who out of his ignorance would have us drench the land in blood again."
But now it was Cormatin, himself, who was silenced by the angry demands that Monsieur de Puisaye's emissary be heard. Vehemently Quentin resumed. "That expedition counts upon finding here an army of three hundred thousand Chouans, likewise raised by the fervent loyalty of Monsieur de Puisaye. Ask yourselves, gentlemen of Brittany, of Normandy, of Maine, of Anjou, is this the moment in which to disband that army, which Monsieur de Cormatin has been instructed through me to hold in readiness?
"Monsieur de Charette may have laid down his arms, seduced by just such a recommendation as is urged upon you, and in the assumption of an authority behind it which does not exist. But Stofflet, as you have heard, has rejected these blandishments. He is still in the Vendée, ready to unite with the troops that are coming from overseas led by Monsieur d'Artois in person. Thus reinforced, can you doubt your power to account for the Republican battalions, whose leaders listened to Monsieur de Cormatin's peace proposals only because too conscious of their weakness? Will you betray King Louis XVII, still a prisoner in the Temple, to whose cause you have vowed yourselves? Ask yourselves these questions, gentlemen, and when you have found the answer, deliver it to Monsieur de Cormatin."
He climbed down, leaving the room in uproar.
Cadoudal clutched his arm. "You've driven him against the wall. He'll need Satan's own guile to answer all that."
St. Regent was grinning into his face. "That's a sour draught you've poured him. And, God help him, he needs must drink it."
But they reckoned without Cormatin's ingenuity and effrontery, and the despair that drove him recklessly to exercise them. Erect, almost contemptuously master of himself, save for the pallor so excessive that his eyes looked black against it, he waited for the clamour to die down.
"You do me wrong," he complained, when at last he could make himself heard, "if you suppose that I have no answer."
"Answer, then," someone shouted to him. "Answer, and be done. What were your orders from the Comte de Puisaye?"
Cormatin raised a shaking hand. "Give me leave! Let me answer in my own fashion."
A tall, swarthy man, authoritative of manner, Poirier de Beauvais, an officer who had distinguished himself in the Vendée, interrupted him again. "The King? What of the King in your fine schemes? Did you leave His Majesty out of your accounts?"
"You insult me by the question," Cormatin thundered back, and in an excitement that made him slur his words, delivered his reply. "There is an understanding that the King shall be restored to liberty as soon after signing the treaty as may reasonably be contrived."
"Why did you not mention it before?" Beauvais demanded. "And what is that understanding worth? What is the nature of it? Be more precise."
"To what end?" Cadoudal stormed in. "To hell with his understandings! I, for one, have heard enough. He has admitted that he speaks without the authority of the Comte Joseph. Of what importance, then, is anything that he says? Remain who will. I am going."
That was to set a match to the train that Quentin had laid. There was such an immediate and general movement to depart, that Cormatin saw the conference wrecked. In frenzy, beating the table, shouting himself hoarse, he again demanded to be heard. Mocked at first, he ended by prevailing. Then, having entirely lost his wits before the danger of shipwreck to his plans, he begged them excitedly to preserve their own.
"A little calm! A little calm, messieurs!" he implored.
He paused to bend his elegant head towards Boishardi, who, pallid and distressed, was whispering to him under cover of his hand. Then he cleared his throat, and resumed.
"Your mistrust, your prejudices, your readiness to listen to every voice that would discredit me, forces me to reveal that which I had hoped for the present to withhold, because it is dangerous to utter it even among ourselves."
He gesticulated nervously, holding his hands clumsily before him, clenching and unclenching them as he spoke. "I have said that we must recognize the Republic. But . . . that is a mere formality. No more. We fulfil it with the mental reservations justifiable wherever there is duress."
This sounded so much like empty nonsense that questions, excited, angry, derisive, bombarded him from every side.
With his handkerchief he mopped his brow and dabbed his lips alternately, in distraction, until some quiet being restored he was able to plunge desperately on.
"Is my meaning not plain? Must I add that such an undertaking will give the Royalist Party time to organize itself and to prepare for a victorious struggle?" In a foaming rage he added, his voice cracking on the words: "Now you have forced me fully into the open. You perceive, perhaps, how far I am from betraying Monsieur de Puisaye's trust."
"More than ever would you be betraying him if that were true," cried Quentin. "For that is something which he could never sanction."
"And why not? Expediency, after all . . ."
He got no farther. Cadoudal, raising a clenched fist and shaking it menacingly, cut him short with a roar of anger and disgust.
"Sir, in the name of every man of honour, in the name of the Royalists of Brittany and Vendée, I forbid you to continue."
With that he swung on his heel, clove angrily through the press of those about him, and stormed out of the room, leaving a fresh uproar behind him.
Cormatin, fulminated by the apostrophe of that simple husbandman, sank in limp anguish to his seat, whilst others went trooping noisily from the room in the wake of Cadoudal. It was curious and notable that the first to go were men of his own comparatively humble class, setting an example to the nobles to abandon a conference over which honour had been shamelessly declared no longer to preside.
St. Regent was detained by Quentin, who would have detained Cadoudal as well had he been given time. For he perceived that if many were disposed to go, many were disposed to linger, and to these he accounted that he had yet a word to say, lest Cormatin should win them back under the treacherous spell of his pacificatory intentions.
"Messieurs, hear yet a word," he called, and Cormatin, in his dejection, made no attempt to check him. "Peace is the common desire of all. But not peace purchased by cowardice and treachery. Could we recognize the Republic with our lips and deny it in our hearts? Could we enter into such a treaty, with the intention to violate it? Such falsity must be repugnant to every gentleman of France, whose boast it is to be a model to the nations of the world in all that concerns honour."
Here at last Cormatin, brought to his feet again, would have arrested him had not the Major-General been howled down and ordered to be silent.
Quentin proceeded. "I invite you to reflect that the action requested of you must close the doors of France forever to the Princes on whose behalf you have taken up arms, and this at the very moment when one of them is preparing to place himself at your head with the resources supplied by England."
That rendered the confusion final and complete. Beyond the table the members of Cormatin's staff, led by Boishardi, broke into invective that aroused answering invective from the assembly. A little more, and swords would have been drawn had not Quentin still contrived to make himself heard above the tumult.
"Monsieur de Cormatin has the honour to command in Brittany by virtue of a commission from our General-in-Chief, Monsieur de Puisaye. Whatever he may pretend, he cannot pretend that this commission was given to him in the name of the Princes in order that he should recognize the Republic."
His utterance was smothered by applause, and few indeed by now were those who did not join in it. At the table Cormatin's officers exchanged despairing glances.
"I summon you, gentlemen, in the name of your General, Monsieur de Puisaye, to suspend Monsieur de Cormatin from his command until fresh order can be taken."
The affirmative answer to the demand thundered from a hundred throats, and made an end of the conference.
Men pressed about Quentin, addressing him by the name which he had suddenly made famous amongst them, praising what he had done, and felicitating him upon the manner in which he had done it.
He did not win free until more than half the assembly had melted away.
"You've given them a passport back to their burrows," said St. Regent. "They'll all be on their way before nightfall, and Cormatin will be left to explain himself to the gentlemen of the Convention he has brought from Paris to settle the peace terms. He's in luck that the guillotine has suddenly become so unpopular."