"And I suppose that while that military commission sat at La Frontenay, you were able to do very little in the way of recruiting for the King?"
"Very little indeed. You see, most of the able-bodied men in the neighbourhood are employed in the foundries, and it is only here and there that we have found a malcontent who was willing to come over to us. But we have got the two hundred men from the powder factory; they are ready to join us the moment your men march on La Frontenay."
"Ah!" exclaimed de Puisaye, as he once more rubbed his wrinkled hands together with an excited gesture which seemed habitual to him. "Ah! there you have it at last, my good d'Aché. Our friend de Courson has explained the situation to you as it has been this past year; now let me tell you how we stand at this present, and what causes me to be so certain for the future. The two hundred men of whom de Courson speaks are convicts employed solely in the more dangerous processes of the manufacture of gunpowder. They are a rough, surly, discontented lot, who live segregated from their fellow-workmen in compounds, which are under special supervision, and they are subject to special discipline. Personally, I should say that even so with these restrictions it was pleasanter to manufacture gunpowder in the factories of La Frontenay than in the jails of Caen or the galleys of Brest. But apparently Paul Leroux, who is in some sort of way the acknowledged leader of the gang, and his mates do not think so. They hate old Gaston de Maurel, they hate Ronnay, they execrated the military commission. They only work under strict compulsion--some say under the lash; in any case, they only work under the terror of punishment, and they are ready at any moment to rebel, to murder, to blow up the factory or to come in on our side--to do anything, in fact, for a change from their present condition, and, above all, for a bribe in the form of a promise of liberty and of money."
While de Puisaye spoke all the men had sat down and drawn their chairs together round a table which stood by the window in a corner of the room. Madame la Marquise, too, had joined the conclave, her enthusiasm and her energy were at least equal to that of any man. Only Fernande sat a little outside the circle, at the end of a sofa, near her father and close beside the window, from whence she could see right over the park to the distant wooded hills, thick and heavy with foliage now, and with the brilliant June sun picking out the clumps of wild roses round the edge of the wood, and the little stream in the valley which wound its turbulent course to the silent pool far away.