Should he try to save himself, this time, at his trial? There was just a chance of doing so if, as was probable, the tribunal had not the minutes of the court at Auray. Could he gull his judges with some story of his being just a Breton peasant, as his dress, or at least the chief part of it, proclaimed him? They were showing more mercy to the Chouans than to their leaders. He could take off his high boots and go barefoot, leave here in the field his sling which, though no longer white, had obviously once been a leader's scarf, untie his hair once more and wear it loose on his shoulders. Among so many, his guards would hardly notice the transformation, and his judges would not have seen him before. Was it worth trying? Yes, for the sake of the promise to the dead, for Anne-Hilarion's sake, and because, at thirty-five, it is not easy to be twice resigned. (2) The military commission began its work at eight next morning. La Vireville, appearing before it at about half-past eleven, found it to consist of a captain of artillery, a sous-lieutenant and a corporal of sharp-shooters, and a sergeant, under the presidency of a chef de bataillon. It was very soon evident that this commission, as he had hoped, had no record of the proceedings of its fellow at Auray. La Vireville's statement that he was a peasant of the Morbihan passed practically unchallenged, helped by the changes he had made in his appearance and by the Bas-Breton with which he interlarded his replies. How then had he come to be taken at Quiberon? Why, because when Hoche had driven in the Chouans from their positions on the mainland, quantities of the peaceable peasants there, as his interrogators knew, had fled to the peninsula with their families. Indeed, warming to his work as he went on, as once before on a less serious occasion at St. Valéry, here in the little bare room in Quiberon village, with his life at stake, Fortuné began in his own mind to invest his supposed family with many likely attributes, and went so far as to tell the commission that one of his brothers had been drowned in trying, most foolishly, to escape to the English fleet. So he had not borne arms against the Republic? Ma Doué, certainly not! Nothing was further from his thoughts; he was a peaceable cultivator, and only wanted to be left alone to cultivate. He had never emigrated? Dame, no! Why should he leave his family, his parish, and his recteur? The commission conferred together. The chef de bataillon seemed to be studying some paper in front of him, glancing off now and again to look at La Vireville very keenly from under his grey eyebrows. "You have never been in North Brittany then?" No; he had never in his life left the Morbihan. "Then you do not know Erquy and Pléneuf?" Not if those places were in North Brittany. For his part, he did not know where they were.