"We have never for an instant lost confidence in you."

She bent her head, with the air and smile of a woman who rather scornfully accepts an apology. She went out of the dining-room and along the hall, the two men following her. César d'Ombré lingered as far as he dared, and grumbled between his teeth.

At that very moment the Prefect of the department, with the newly appointed General in command of the troops stationed there, only escorted by three men in the dress of gendarmes, rode slowly and gently round the back of the kitchen into the sandy courtyard of Les Chouettes.

"Monsieur de la Marinière's hermitage," said the Prefect to his companion.

"It looks like one, sapristi!" said the General.

Nothing could seem stiller, more fast asleep, than Les Chouettes in the approaching noon of that hot September day. The dogs barked and growled, it was true, but only one of them, the youngest, troubled himself to get up from where he lay in the warm sand. No human creature was to be seen about the house or buildings; the silence of the woods lay all around; the dry air smelt delicately of wood smoke and fir trees; the shadows were very deep, cutting across the broad belts of glowing sunshine.

"Every one is asleep," said the Prefect. "I am afraid breakfast is over; we ought to have arrived an hour ago."

"Caught them napping!" chuckled the General.

The voices, and the clinking of bridles, as the little cavalcade passed towards the house at a walking pace, brought the cook to the kitchen door. She stared in consternation. She was a pretty woman, Gigot's wife, with a pale complexion and black hair; her provincial cap was very becoming. But she now turned as red as a turkey-cock and her jaw dropped, as she stared after the horsemen. No one had warned her: there had not been time or opportunity. She was just dishing up the roast meat for the hungry appetites of Messieurs les Chouans, when behold, the gendarmes! Who the gentlemen were, she did not know; but imperial gendarmes were never a welcome sight to Monsieur Joseph's household.

"The place is like a city of the dead," said the Prefect, drawing rein in front of the salon windows. "See if you can find any one, Simon, and ask for Monsieur de la Marinière."

One of the gendarmes dismounted. Wearing the ordinary dress of these civil soldiers, he yet differed in some indefinable way from his two companions. He had the keen and wary look of a clever dog; his eyes were everywhere.

"City of the dead, eh! Plenty of footprints of the living!" he muttered, as he turned back towards the outbuildings and noticed the trampled sand.

Marie Gigot saw him coming, and dived back into her kitchen.

"Ah! it is that demon!" she said to herself. "Holy Virgin, defend us! I thought that wretch was gone. All of them in the dining-room—the stable full of their horses, and no one there but that ignorant Tobie! We are done for at last, that's sure. Eh! there's Monsieur Angelot talking to him. But of course it is hopeless. That must be the Prefect. To be sure they say he is better than the last—and it may be only a friendly visit—and why should not my master have his friends to breakfast? But then, again, what brings that Simon, that Chouan-catcher, as they call him! Why, Gigot told me of half-a-dozen fellows who had sworn to shoot him, and not a hundred miles from here."

She ran to the door again and looked out. Angelot, cool and quiet, had come out of the stable and met the gendarme face to face, returning his salutation with indifference.

"It is Monsieur le Préfet? Certainly, my uncle is at home," he said. "I am not sure that he is in the house," and he walked on towards the group of horsemen.

"Not in the house!" breathed the cook. "They are hiding, then! They must have heard or seen them coming—ah, how stupid I am! I saw mademoiselle run past the window."

Angelot came bareheaded, smiling, to represent his uncle in welcoming the Prefect to Les Chouettes. He would not have been his father's son if the droll side of the situation had not struck him. He thought it exquisite, though he was sorry for his uncle's annoyance. The Chouan guests had irritated him, and that they should lose their breakfast seemed a happy retribution, though he would have done all he could to save them from further penalties. Angelot looked up at the Prefect, his handsome sleepy eyes alight with laughter.

"Do my uncle the pleasure of coming in, monsieur," he said. "He will be here immediately; he has been out shooting. It is exactly breakfast time."

"We shall be very grateful for your uncle's hospitality; we have had a long ride in the heat," said the Prefect.

His eyes as they met Angelot's were very keen, as well as very kind and gentle. He was a singularly good-looking man, and sat his horse gracefully. His manners were those of the great world; he was one of the noblest and most popular of the men of old family who had rallied to the Empire, believing that Napoleon's genius and the glory of France were one.

"Monsieur le Général," he said, turning to his companion, "let me present Monsieur Ange de la Marinière, the son of Monsieur Urbain de la Marinière, one of my truest friends in the department."

The rough and mocking voice that answered—"Happy to make his acquaintance"—brought the colour into Angelot's face as he bowed.

The Prefect, who for reasons of his own watched the lad curiously, saw the change, the cloud that darkened those frank looks suddenly, and understood it pretty well. The new military commander, risen from the ranks in every sense, had nothing to justify his position except courage, a talent for commanding, and devotion to the Emperor. That he was not now fighting in Spain was due partly to quarrels with other generals, partly to wounds received in the last Austrian campaign, which unfitted him for the time for active service. In sending him to this Royalist province of the West, Napoleon might have aimed at providing the Prefect with an effective foil to his own character and connections. The great Emperor by no means despised the trick of setting his servants to watch one another.

One personal peculiarity this General possessed, which had both helped and hindered him in his career. As Monsieur des Barres said, he was exceedingly like his master. A taller, heavier man, his face and head were a coarse likeness of Napoleon's. There were the lines of beauty without the sweetness, the strength without the genius, the ingrained selfishness unveiled by any mask, even of policy. General Ratoneau was repulsive where Napoleon was attractive. He had fought under Napoleon from the beginning, and had risen by his own efforts, disliked by all his superiors, even by the Emperor, to whom the strange likeness did not recommend him. But it had a great effect on the men who fought under him. Though he was a brutal leader, they were ready to follow him anywhere, and had been known to call him le gros caporal, so strong and obvious was this likeness. He was a splendid soldier, though ill-tempered, cruel, and overbearing. He was a man to be reckoned with, and so the amiable Prefect found. Having himself plenty of scruples, plenty of humanity, and a horror of civil war, he found a colleague with none of these difficult to manage. Nothing, for instance, was further from the Prefect's wish than to spy upon his Royalist neighbours and to drive them to desperation. The very word Chouan represented to General Ratoneau a wild beast to be trapped or hunted.

Angelot looked at this man, and from the first glance hated him. There was something insolent in the stare of those bold dark eyes, which were