ng distinguishes from its
fellows. It is the fourth to the right on entering the village.

Let us put our eye to one of these chinks and look in.

We see a man dressed like the rich peasants of Morbihan, except that
gold lace about a finger wide stripes the collar and buttonholes of his
coat and also the edges of his hat. The rest of his dress consists of
leathern trousers and high-topped boots. His sword is thrown upon a
chair. A brace of pistols lies within reach of his hand. Within the
fireplace the barrels of two or three muskets reflect the light of a
blazing fire.

The man is seated before a table; a lamp lights some papers which he is
reading with great attention, and illuminates his face at the same time.

The face is that of a man of thirty. When the cares of a partisan
warfare do not darken it, its expression must surely be frank and
joyous. Beautiful blond hair frames it; great blue eyes enliven it;
the head, of a shape peculiarly Breton, seems to show, if we believe in
Gall's system, an exaggerated development of the organs of self-will.
And the man has two names. That by which he is known to his soldiers,
his familiar name, is Round-head; and his real name, received from
brave and worthy parents, Georges Cadudal, or rather Cadoudal, tradition
having changed the orthography of a name that is now historic.

Georges was the son of a farmer of the parish of Kerleano in the commune
of Brech. The story goes that this farmer was once a miller. Georges had
just received at the college of Vannes--distant only a few leagues from
Brech--a good and solid education when the first appeals for a royalist
insurrection were made in Vendee. Cadoudal listened to them, gathered
together a number of his companions, and offered his services to
Stofflet. But Stofflet insisted on seeing him at work before he accepted
him. Georges asked nothing better. Such occasions were not long to seek
in the Vendean army. On the next day there was a battle; Georges went
into it with such determination and made so desperate a rush that M. de
Maulevrier's former huntsman, on seeing him charge the Blues, could not
refrain from saying aloud to Bonchamp, who was near him:

"If a cannon ball doesn't take off that _Big Round Head_, it will roll
far, I warrant you."

The name clung to Cadoudal--a name by which, five centuries earlier, the
lords of Malestroit, Penhoel, Beaumanoir and Rochefort designated the
great Constable, whose ransom was spun