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.