"I suppose she begged mercy for them. Oh! I doubt not that she interceded in their behalf also--" "Worse than that, Abbot! She demanded their immediate liberation, and threatened the sergeant with the anger of the Marquis of Chateauvieux!" "Steps have to be taken in the matter of this poor insane girl." "I am all the readier for that, madam, seeing that, according to what my bailiff writes, my sister's intervention in these matters has produced detestable effects. My vassals, finding themselves encouraged in resisting the payment of the taxes, are now loudly clamoring that the imposts are exorbitant, and will not pay them! Finally, the most lawless of them, feeling encouraged by immunity, are no longer afraid to declare that the hay-fork of a Breton does not fear the bayonet of a soldier of the King; that if the latter are well armed, the peasants are more numerous; and that the fury of their despair will render them a match for the soldiers when the hour of revolt shall have sounded! It is a call to insurrection! To a popular revolt!" "An insurrection! A revolt!" cried the Marchioness, alarmed. "How dare the wretches talk of insurrection and revolt!" "We are relapsing into the Jacquerie!" put in the Abbot, raising his hands heavenward. "Jacques under Louis XIV! Under the Grand Monarch! In the Seventeenth Century! It must be the end of the world! Woe is us!" "Prompt and terrible punishment will, I still hope, my dear Abbot, bring these clowns back to their duty," answered the Count. "But my sister has encouraged the scoundrels. Her insane generosity has chosen for its object the very worst elements of all my vassals. The poacher and the recalcitrant vassal belong to a certain Lebrenn family, that numbers among its members two mariners of the port of Vannes--a brace of active and intriguing adventurers, who are strongly suspected of aiming at sedition, and of even having secret understandings with the republicans of Holland! They are both men of thought and action--most dangerous fellows!" "Marchioness," observed the Abbot, casting a meaning look at Madam Tremblay, "what did I tell you about that family, which our venerable Society of Jesus over a century and a half ago entered in its secret register as one of the most dangerous? My information evidently was most correct and accurate. An eye will have to be kept upon those people." "What do you refer to?" asked the Count of Plouernel. "What information can you have had concerning these people?"