He stood stock-still in a
prophetic attitude, as though he were the Genius of Brittany rising
from a slumber of three years, to renew a war in which victory could
only be followed by twofold mourning.
"A pretty fellow this!" thought Hulot; "he looks to me like the
emissary of men who mean to argue with their muskets."
Having growled these words between his teeth, the commandant cast his
eyes in turn from the man to the valley, from the valley to the
detachment, from the detachment to the steep acclivities on the right
of the road, the ridges of which were covered with the broom and gorse
of Brittany; then he suddenly turned them full on the stranger, whom
he subjected to a mute interrogation, which he ended at last by
roughly demanding, "Where do you come from?"
His eager, piercing eye strove to detect the secrets of that
impenetrable face, which never changed from the vacant, torpid
expression in which a peasant when doing nothing wraps himself.
"From the country of the Gars," replied the man, without showing any
uneasiness.
"Your name?"
"Marche-a-Terre."
"Why do you call yourself by your Chouan name in defiance of the law?"
Marche-a-Terre, to use the name he gave to himself, looked at the
commandant with so genuine an air of stupidity that the soldier
believed the man had not understood him.
"Do you belong to the recruits from Fougeres?"
To this inquiry Marche-a-Terre replied by the bucolic "I don't know,"
the hopeless imbecility of which puts an end to all inquiry.
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