of limb and loud of voice. With them came the coach, and there
was such a press about the gates that La Boulaye looked to see some of
them crushed to death. But with a few shouts and oaths and threats at
one another they got through in safety, and the unwieldy carriage was
brought to a standstill.

They were clamouring about its doors, and to La Boulaye it seemed that
they were on the point of quarrelling among themselves, some wanting to
enter the coach and others seeking to restrain them, when through the
porte-cochere rode Charlot Tardivet himself.

He barked out a sharp word of command, and they grew silent and still,
testifying to a discipline which said much for the strength of character
of their captain. He was strangely altered, was this Tardivet, and
his appearance now was worthy of his followers. Under a gaudily-laced,
three-cornered hat his hair hung dishevelled and unkempt, like wisps of
straw. He wore a coat of flowered black silk, with a heavy gold edging,
and a very bright plum-coloured waistcoat showed above the broad
tricolour scarf that sashed his middle. His breeches were white (or
had been white in origin), and disappeared into a pair of very lustrous
lacquered boots that rose high above his knees. A cavalry sabre of
ordinary dimensions hung from a military belt, and a pistol-butt,
peeping from his sash, completed the astonishing motley of his
appearance. For the rest, he was the same tall and well-knit fellow;
but there was more strength in his square chin, more intelligence in the
keen blue eyes, and, alas! more coarseness in the mouth, which bristled
with a reddish beard of some days' growth.

La Boulaye watched him with interest. He had become intimate with him
in the old days in Paris, whither Tardivet had gone, and where, fired
by the wrongs he had suffered, he had been one of the apostles of the
Revolution. When the frontiers of France had been in danger Tardivet
had taken up arms, and by the lustre which he had shed upon the name of
Captain Charlotas he was come to be called throughout the army--he had
eclipsed the fame of Citizen Tardivet, the erstwhile prophet of liberty.
Great changes these in the estate of one who had been a simple peasant;
but then the times were times of great changes. Was not Santerre, the
brewer, become a great general, and was not Robespierre, the obscure
lawyer of Arras, by way of becoming a dictator? Was it, therefore,
wonderful that Charlot should have passed f