“Because,” said the gloomy apparition, with an accent which proved his difficulty in speaking French, “there Maine begins” (pointing with his huge, rough hand towards Ernee), “and Bretagne ends.”
Then he struck the ground sharply with the handle of his heavy whip close to the commandant’s feet. The impression produced on the spectators by the laconic harangue of the stranger was like that of a tom-tom in the midst of tender music. But the word “harangue” is insufficient to reproduce the hatred, the desires of vengeance expressed by the haughty gesture of the hand, the brevity of the speech, and the look of sullen and cool-blooded energy on the countenance of the speaker. The coarseness and roughness of the man,--chopped out, as it seemed by an axe, with his rough bark still left on him,--and the stupid ignorance of his features, made him seem, for the moment, like some half-savage demigod. 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.
“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?”