The subsoil of such a forest was like a madrepore pierced and intersected in all directions by a secret labyrinth of mines, cells, and galleries. Each of these hidden cells was large enough to shelter five or six men; the only difficulty was in breathing. Certain mysterious ciphers have been preserved that give us a clew to this powerful organization of the peasant rebellion. In Ille-et-Vilaine, in the forest of Pertre, where the Prince de Talmont had taken refuge, not a breath could be heard, not a trace of human life was visible; and yet Focard had there mustered six thousand men. In Morbihan, in the forest of Meulac, not a man of all the eight thousand there was to be seen. These two forests, le Pertre and Meulac, are not, however, to be reckoned among the great Breton forests. It would have been dangerous walking over their explosive soil. These treacherous copses, with their multitudes of combatants lurking in a sort of subterranean labyrinth, were like great black sponges, from which, beneath the pressure of Revolution's giant foot, civil war gushed forth. Invisible battalions were lying in wait. This army, unknown to the world, wound its way along under the feet of the Republican armies, leaping out of the ground at times in vast numbers, and disappearing as suddenly,--possessing the power of vanishing at will no less than the gift of ubiquity. It was like the descending avalanche that leaves but a cloud of dust behind, colossi with a marvellous genius for contraction, giants in warfare, dwarfs in flight, jaguars with the habits of moles. Moreover, there were woods as well as forests. As the village ranks below the city, so the woods, bear a similar relation to the forests, which they serve to connect after the fashion of a labyrinth. Old castles, fortresses once upon a time, hamlets that had been camps, farms covered with ambushes and snares, divided by ditches and fenced in by trees, formed the meshes of the net in which the Republican armies were caught. All this was called the Bocage.