es."

"Your power seems to have stopped there," remarked Corentin; "the fears
of your _ci-devant_ are greater than the love you inspire."

"You judge him by yourself," she replied, with a contemptuous look.

"Well, then," said he, unmoved, "why did you not bring him here to your
own house?"

"Commandant," she said to Hulot, with a coaxing smile, "if he really
loves me, would you blame me for saving his life and getting him to
leave France?"

The old soldier came quickly up to her, took her hand, and kissed it
with a sort of enthusiasm. Then he looked at her fixedly and said in a
gloomy tone: "You forget my two friends and my sixty-three men."

"Ah, commandant," she cried, with all the naivete of passion, "he was
not accountable for that; he was deceived by a bad woman, Charette's
mistress, who would, I do believe, drink the blood of the Blues."

"Come, Marie," said Corentin, "don't tease the commandant; he does not
understand such jokes."

"Hold your tongue," she answered, "and remember that the day when you
displease me too much will have no morrow for you."

"I see, mademoiselle," said Hulot, without bitterness, "that I must
prepare for a fight."

"You are not strong enough, my dear colonel. I saw more than six
thousand men at Saint-James,--regular troops, artillery, and English
officers. But they cannot do much unless _he_ leads them? I agree with
Fouche, his presence is the head and front of everything."

"Are we to get his head?--that's the point," said Corentin, impatiently.

"I don't know," she answered, carelessly.

"English officers!" cried Hulot, angrily, "that's all that was wanting
to make a regular brigand of him. Ha! ha! I'll give him English, I
will!"

"It seems to me, citizen-diplomat," said Hulot to Corentin, after the
two had taken leave and were at some distance from the house, "that you
allow that girl to send you to the right-about when she pleases."

"It is quite natural for you, commandant," replied Corentin, with a
thoughtful air, "to see nothing but fighting in what she said to us. You
soldiers never seem to know there are various ways of making war. To use
the passions of men and women like wires to be pulled for the benefit
of the State; to keep the running-gear of the great machine we call
government in good order, and fasten to it the desires of human nature,
like baited traps which it is fun to watch,--I call _that_ creating a
world, like God, and putting ourselves at the