yard, and with him three or four of his acquaintance--men equally
well-known in St. Florent.

There was a sturdy farmer there of the better sort--a man who not only
held a farm near the town, but had a small shop within it, for the sale
of seeds and tools for planting--his name was Foret--and it was said
that no man in St. Florent was more anxious for the restoration of the
King. There was the keeper of the auberge himself, who seemed but little
inclined to find fault with his servant, for the contumacious manner in
which he treated the commands of the Convention; and there was the
well-known postillion of St. Florent, the crack of whose whip was so
welcome from Angers to Nantes, the sound of whose cheery voice was so
warmly greeted at every hostelrie between those towns. The name of
Cathelineau was not then so well known as it was some six months
afterwards, but even then Cathelineau, the postillion, was the most
popular man in St. Florent. He was the merriest among the mirthful, the
friend of every child, the playmate of every lass in the town; but he
was the comforter of those poorer than himself, and the solace of the
aged and afflicted. He was the friend of the banished priest, and the
trusted messenger of the royalist seigneur; all classes adored him, save
those who sided with the Republic, and by them he had long been looked
on as an open and declared enemy. St. Florent was justly proud of its
postillion; and now that evil days were come upon the little town, that
their priests were banished, and these young men called for to swell the
armies of the hated Convention, many flocked to Cathelineau to ask from
whence he expected deliverance from all their troubles.

It was well known that Peter Berrier was the first whom the Colonel's
myrmidons would be sent to seize, and many eyes were resting on the
group collected at the gateway of the auberge, as the corporal and the