s; and, the king accepting his suggestion,
the company was formed, and began operations. But the secretary of war
took this movement of his colleague in high dudgeon, as the supply of
the army, he thought, belonged to the war department. To frustrate and
disgrace the new company of contractors, he ordered the army destined to
operate in Italy to take the field on the first of May, several weeks
before it was possible for the contractors by the ordinary methods to
collect and move the requisite supplies. The company explained the
impossibility of their feeding the army so early in the season; but the
minister of war, not ill-pleased to see his rival embarrassed, held to
his purpose, and informed the contractors' agent that he must have
thirty thousand sacks of flour at a certain post by a certain day, or
his head should answer it.

The agent, alarmed, and at his wits' end, consulted the innkeeper of the
Alps, whom he knew to be an energetic spirit, and perfectly well
acquainted with the men, the animals, the resources, and the roads of
the region in which he lived, and through which the provisions would
have to pass. The elder sons of the landlord were in the field at the
time at work, and he told the agent he must wait a few hours till he
could talk the matter over with them. At the close of the day there was
a family consultation, and the result was that they undertook the task.
Antoine, the eldest son, went to Lyons, the nearest large city, and
induced the magistrates to lend the king the grain preserved in the
public depositories against famine, engaging to replace it as soon as
the navigation opened in the spring. The magistrates, full of zeal for
the king's service, yielded willingly; and meanwhile, Claude, the second
of the brothers, bought a thousand mules; and, in a very few days, in
spite of the rigor of the season, long lines of mules, each laden with a
sack of flour, were winding their way through the defiles of the Alps,
guided by peasants whom the father of these boys had selected.

This operation being insufficient, hundreds of laborers were set to work
breaking the ice in the night, and in constructing barges, so as to be
in readiness the moment navigation was practicable.

Early in the spring two hundred barge loads were set floating down
toward the seat of war; and by the time the general in command was ready
to take the field, there was an abundance of tents, provisions,
ammunition, and artillery wit