n they meant Bretons, just as on the left bank they said
brigands when they meant Vendeans.

It is not for us to relate the death and destruction of that heroic
family, nor follow to the scaffold the two sisters and a brother, nor
tell of battlefields where Jean and Rene, martyrs to their faith, lay
dying or dead. Many years have elapsed since the executions of Perrine,
Rene and Pierre, and the death of Jean; and the martyrdom of the
sisters, the exploits of the brothers have passed into legends. We have
now to do with their successors.

It is true that these gars (lads) are faithful to their traditions. As
they fought beside la Rouerie, Bois-Hardy and Bernard de Villeneuve, so
did they fight beside Bourmont, Frotte, and Georges Cadoudal. Theirs
was always the same courage, the same devotion--that of the Christian
soldier, the faithful royalist. Their aspect is always the same, rough
and savage; their weapons, the same gun or cudgel, called in those
parts a "ferte." Their garments are the same; a brown woollen cap, or a
broad-brimmed hat scarcely covering the long straight hair that fell in
tangles on their shoulders, the old _Aulerci Cenomani_, as in Caesar's
day, _promisso capillo_; they are the same Bretons with wide breeches of
whom Martial said:

_Tam laxa est..._
_Quam veteres braccoe Britonis pauperis._

To protect themselves from rain and cold they wore goatskin garments,
made with the long hair turned outside; on the breasts of which, as
countersign, some wore a scapulary and chaplet, others a heart, the
heart of Jesus; this latter was the distinctive sign of a fraternity
which withdrew apart each day for common prayer.

Such were the men, who, at the time we are crossing the borderland
between the Loire-Inferieure and Morbihan, were scattered from La
Roche-Bernard to Vannes, and from Quertemberg to Billiers, surrounding
consequently the village of Muzillac.

But it needed the eye of the eagle soaring in the clouds, or that of the
screech-owl piercing the darkness, to distinguish these men among the
gorse and heather and underbrush where they were crouching.

Let us pass through this network of invisible sentinels, and after
fording two streams, the affluents of a nameless river which flows into
the sea near Billiers, between Arzal and Dangau, let us boldly enter the
village of Muzillac.

All is still and sombre; a single light shines through the blinds of
a house, or rather a cottage, which nothi