est respect for their fellow-beings, on a neighbor's
shoulder. The patriot, Gudin, and the driver had let him alone, thinking
him asleep, after discovering that it was useless to talk to a man whose
stolid face betrayed an existence spent in measuring yards of linen, and
an intellect employed in selling them at a good percentage above cost.
This fat little man, doubled-up in his corner, opened his porcelain-blue
eyes every now and then, and looked at each speaker with a sort of
terror. He appeared to be afraid of his fellow-travellers and to care
very little about the Chouans. When he looked at the driver, however,
they seemed to be a pair of free-masons. Just then the first volley
of musketry was heard on La Pelerine. Coupiau, frightened, stopped the
coach.

"Oh! oh!" said the priest, as if he had some means of judging, "it is a
serious engagement; there are many men."

"The trouble for us, Monsieur Gudin," cried Coupiau, "is to know which
side will win."

The faces of all became unanimously anxious.

"Let us put up the coach at that inn which I see over there," said the
patriot; "we can hide it till we know the result of the fight."

The advice seemed so good that Coupiau followed it. The patriot helped
him to conceal the coach behind a wood-pile; the abbe seized the
occasion to pull Coupiau aside and say to him, in a low voice: "Has he
really any money?"

"Hey, Monsieur Gudin, if it gets into the pockets of your Reverence,
they won't be weighed down with it."

When the Blues marched by, after the encounter on La Pelerine, they were
in such haste to reach Ernee that they passed the little inn without
halting. At the sound of their hasty march, Gudin and the innkeeper,
stirred by curiosity, went to the gate of the courtyard to watch them.
Suddenly, the fat ecclesiastic rushed to a soldier who was lagging in
the rear.

"Gudin!" he cried, "you wrong-headed fellow, have you joined the Blues?
My lad, you are surely not in earnest?"

"Yes, uncle," answered the corporal. "I've sworn to defend France."

"Unhappy boy! you'll lose your soul," said the uncle, trying to rouse
his nephew to the religious sentiments which are so powerful in the
Breton breast.

"Uncle," said the young man, "if the king had placed himself at the head
of his armies, I don't say but what--"

"Fool! who is talking to you about the king? Does your republic give
abbeys? No, it has upset everything. How do you expect to get on in
life? Stay