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Title: The Chouans

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Release Date: October, 1999 [Etext #1921]
Posting Date: March 5, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHOUANS ***

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

THE CHOUANS

By Honore de Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION

To Monsieur Theodore Dablin, Merchant.

To my first friend, my first work.

De Balzac.

THE CHOUANS

I. AN AMBUSCADE

Early in the year VIII., at the beginning of Vendemiaire, or, to conform
to our own calendar, towards the close of September, 1799, a hundred or
so of peasants and a large number of citizens, who had left Fougeres in
the morning on their way to Mayenne, were going up the little mountain
of La Pelerine, half-way between Fougeres and Ernee, a small town where
travellers along that road are in the habit of resting. This company,
divided into groups that were more or less numerous, presented a
collection of such fantastic costumes and a mixture of individuals
belonging to so many and diverse localities and professions that it will
be well to describe their characteristic differences, in order to give
to this history the vivid local coloring to which so much value is
attached in these days,--though some critics do assert that it injures
the representation of sentiments.

Many of the peasants, in fact the greater number, were barefooted, and
wore no other garments than a large goatskin, which covered them from
the neck to the knees, and trousers of white and very coarse linen, the
ill-woven texture of which betrayed the slovenly industrial habits of
the region. The straight locks of their long hair mingling with those
of the goatskin hid their faces, which were bent on the ground, so
completely that the garment might have been thought their own skin,
and they themselves mistaken at first sight for a species of the animal
which served them as clothing. But through this tangle of hair their
eyes were presently seen to shine like dew-drops in a