Then, with the rattle of beads and the murmur of the Ave Maria in his ears, La Vireville went off into slumber, and dreamt that Mr. Tollemache, whom he believed to be in the English flotilla, was telling Mr. Elphinstone (the latter in a cocked hat and epaulettes) by the barricade at Auray, that it had been arranged for the English soldiers to land, and the Frenchmen to man the English ships. But, Anne-Hilarion appearing suddenly in a boat, and signifying that he wished to have Grain d'Orge for a nurse instead of Elspeth, the conversation became entirely occupied with this startling proposal--which did not, however, strike La Vireville in his dream as being anything out of the common. CHAPTER XXIV CREEPING FATE (1) "Mon cher beaupère," wrote the Marquis de Flavigny, "my former letter (if you ever get it, which I should think doubtful) will have told you of the incidents of our landing at Carnac. I have now to inform you that we are in complete possession of the peninsula of Quiberon, the fort which commands it having surrendered, on being summoned, three days ago. In consequence all the émigré regiments have left their temporary quarters on the mainland, round Carnac, and are bivouacked in the peninsula itself. I myself write actually in Fort Penthièvre, and at this very moment I hear the sound of pick and spade, for the engineers, who have hopes, they say, of making it into another Gibraltar, are hard at work this morning throwing up fresh entrenchments." The young man broke off, and looked down from the embrasure of the surrendered fort, where he was sitting, at the work to which he had just referred. For three days, as he had said, the fleur-de-lys had floated over Fort Penthièvre, having been hoisted there, in fact, on the very day of the failure of the Chouan attack on Auray. What wonder if the enheartened Royalists had toasted the future that night, in the poor little villages scattered among the stone-encircled fields, or that they saw in a bright vision not only the restored splendours of Versailles--the triumph of a cause--but the tourelles of the château or the little manoir, long in alien hands, which they had left for poverty and exile . . . recovered homes where now, after all, their children and their children's children might play. But to-day the white and gold standard hung in heavy, listless folds from the flagstaff, for it was a hot, close morning, of the kind that saps the energies and is tinged besides with a suggestion of unpleasant auguries, the sensation of waiting for something to happen, one knows not what. . . . A scarcely visible sun sent down a surprising heat, and haze lay over the sea on either side. Even the throb of the Atlantic sounded sullen and remote, for all its nearness.