ur only hope is in victory and, at
any rate, those who die on the battlefield will be happy, in
comparison with those who fall into the hands of the Blues."

"You wish to go, Leigh?"

"Certainly I do," the lad said. "I think that everyone strong
enough to carry arms, in La Vendee, ought to join and do his best.
I can shoot better than most of the peasantry, not one in twenty of
whom has ever had a gun in his hands; and I am sure that I am as
strong as most of them. Besides, if I had been at home I should,
now the war has begun, have tried to get a commission and to fight
the French--I mean the people who govern France at present--and in
fighting them, here, I am only doing what thousands of Englishmen
will be doing elsewhere."

"Very well, Leigh, then you shall go with Jean. I shall certainly
be glad to know you are together, so that if one is wounded or ill,
the other can look after him and bring him here. I shall do the
best I can, while you are away."

"I think that we shall soon be back again, and that we shall be
constantly seeing you," Jean said. "You may be sure that the
peasants will not keep the field. They will gather and fight and,
win or lose, they will then scatter to their homes again, until the
church bells call them out to repel a fresh attack of the enemy.
That is our real weakness. There will never be any discipline,
never any common aim.

"If all the peasants in the west would join in a great effort, and
march on Paris, I believe that the peasantry of the departments
through which they pass would join us. It would only be the
National Guards of the towns, and the new levies, that we should
have to meet; and I believe that we might take Paris, crush the
scum of the faubourgs, and hang every member of the Convention. But
they will never do it. It will be a war of defence, only; and a war
so carried out must, in the long run, be an unsuccessful one.

"However, the result will be that we shall never be very far away
from home, and shall often return for a few days. You must always
keep a change of clothes, and your trinkets and so on, packed up;
so that at an hour's notice you and Marthe can start with the
child, either on receiving a note from me telling you where to join
us, or if you get news that a force from Nantes is marching rapidly
in this direction. Two horses will always remain in the stables, in
readiness to put into the light cart. Henri will be your driver.
Francois you must send off