Any
one initiated into the secrets of the civil discords which were then
agitating the whole of France could easily have distinguished the few
individuals on whose fidelity the Republic might count among these
groups, almost entirely made up of men who four years earlier were at
war with her.
One other and rather noticeable sign left no doubt upon the opinions
which divided the detachment. The Republicans alone marched with an
air of gaiety. As to the other individuals of the troop, if their
clothes showed marked differences, their faces at least and their
attitudes wore a uniform expression of ill-fortune. Citizens and
peasantry, their faces all bore the imprint of deepest melancholy;
their silence had something sullen in it; they all seemed crushed
under the yoke of a single thought, terrible no doubt but carefully
concealed, for their faces were impenetrable, the slowness of their
gait alone betraying their inward communings. From time to time a few
of them, noticeable for the rosaries hanging from their necks
(dangerous as it was to carry that sign of a religion which was
suppressed, rather than abolished) shook their long hair and raised
their heads defiantly. They covertly examined the woods, and paths,
and masses of rock which flanked the road, after the manner of a dog
with his nose to the wind trying to scent his game; and then, hearing
nothing but the monotonous tramp of the silent company, they lowered
their heads once more with the old expression of despair, like
criminals on their way to the galleys to live or die.
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