Outside, in the August sun, switching their tails to keep off the flies, were the horses. The four younger chiefs trotted off together down the avenue, but Gilbert walked by Royrand’s side for a little while, and when they parted the old soldier bent from his saddle and kissed him. Was it that salute, as of a comrade about to die, which struck a sudden question into Gilbert’s mind, as he stood a moment shading his eyes, even under the trees, to see the last of them? For Sapinaud was gone, killed in July a few miles away, and the whole army still mourned the irreparable loss of their first and greatest general-in-chief, the peasant Cathelineau. . . . Could he have known, La Rochejaquelein should build himself an imperishable name and never see his twenty-second birthday; Lescure had but three months to live, the old man who had embraced him but little longer. How long had he and Louis, who had played together so often under these trees? The question troubled him not at all, but it suddenly shed on the whole château, as he turned, and it lay before him, a kind of vaporous unreality. Even Louis, as he sat upon the steps of the perron waiting for him, was not exempt from it. “Poor Louis,” he said, looking down at him with amusement and affection. “Have you forgiven me for staying here?” “Parbleu!” returned his kinsman lazily, “the way to Luçon is long, and that confounded plain will be as hot as hell. One is better off here, after all. When we have barricaded a few windows—which I suppose we must do for the look of the thing—let’s go and see if we cannot catch a trout or two.” They entered arm-in-arm, laughing, and turned, directly they were inside, with alacrity to business. All day long the château rang with the noise of hammers, and men tramped to and fro, dragging mattresses from the beds with dirty and unhallowed hands. The dining-room became a sort of guard-room, the Marquise’s boudoir was full of planks and ammunition. Gilbert, Louis, and the priest supped in the library, the only room left to them by the evening. “It is hard to imagine that we are—supposedly—in a state of siege, isn’t it, Father?” asked Louis, pulling his spaniel’s ears, as they sat there afterwards. The priest nodded, smiling. “It is hard to realise that we are not back in the old days years ago—before the troubles,” remarked Gilbert, who was lying back in an arm-chair. His voice sounded unusually dreamy. “It might be in the time when we were boys, and did our lessons here.” “Except that we were never allowed to make the room so untidy,” added Louis. “Why your generals could not hold a council without throwing all the maps on the floor, Gilbert, I can’t conceive. It almost leads one to suspect that they used them as missiles to enforce their different views. If Marigny had been present I can well imagine him hurling an atlas at some one.”