Before taking any resolution he set himself to study the position in which it was evident the enemy intended to surprise him. Observing that the road where the column had halted was about to pass through a sort of gorge, short to be sure, but flanked with woods from which several paths appeared to issue, he frowned heavily, and said to his two friends, in a low voice of some emotion:-- “We’re in a devil of a wasp’s-nest.” “What do you fear?” asked Gerard. “Fear? Yes, that’s it, _fear_,” returned the commandant. “I have always had a fear of being shot like a dog at the edge of a wood, without a chance of crying out ‘Who goes there?’” “Pooh!” said Merle, laughing, “‘Who goes there’ is all humbug.” “Are we in any real danger?” asked Gerard, as much surprised by Hulot’s coolness as he was by his evident alarm. “Hush!” said the commandant, in a low voice. “We are in the jaws of the wolf; it is as dark as a pocket; and we must get some light. Luckily, we’ve got the upper end of the slope!” So saying, he moved, with his two officers, in a way to surround Marche-a-Terre, who rose quickly, pretending to think himself in the way. “Stay where you are, vagabond!” said Hulot, keeping his eye on the apparently indifferent face of the Breton, and giving him a push which threw him back on the place where he had been sitting. “Friends,” continued Hulot, in a low voice, speaking to the two officers. “It is time I should tell you that it is all up with the army in Paris. The Directory, in consequence of a disturbance in the Assembly, has made another clean sweep of our affairs. Those pentarchs,--puppets, I call them,--those directors have just lost a good blade; Bernadotte has abandoned them.” “Who will take his place?” asked Gerard, eagerly. “Milet-Mureau, an old blockhead. A pretty time to choose to let fools sail the ship! English rockets from all the headlands, and those cursed Chouan cockchafers in the air! You may rely upon it that some one behind those puppets pulled the wire when they saw we were getting the worst of it.” “How getting the worst of it?”