"All _hope_, yes, perhaps; all effort, _no_. Madame has written that she is urged forward by the committee in Paris; Madame assures us that she has ramifications in the army. Let us therefore make the attempt! Possibly a riot in Paris, combined with a defection in the army, may prove her judgment to have been better than ours. If we make no attempt on her behalf, Madame will always be convinced that had it been made it would have been successful; and no doubt ought to be left in Madame's mind." "But if the attempt fails?" cried Petit-Pierre. "Five or six hundred men will have been uselessly killed, that is all. It is well that from time to time a party, even if it fails, should give such examples, not only to its own country but to neighboring nations." "You are not of those who have sent back their men, then?" asked Petit-Pierre. "No, monsieur; but I am of those who have sworn to die for her Royal Highness. Besides," he added, "perhaps the affair has already begun, and there may be no choice but to follow the movement." "How so?" asked Petit-Pierre, Bonneville, and the marquis, in one breath. "Shots were fired to-day at the fair at Montaigu--" "And firing is going on now at the fords of the Boulogne," said an unknown voice from the doorway, on the threshold of which a new personage now appeared. XXX. THE WARNING. The person we now introduce, or rather the person who now introduced himself into the salon of the Marquis de Souday, was the commissary-general of the future Vendéan army, who had changed his name, well-known at the bar of Nantes, for that of Pascal. He had gone several times into foreign lands to confer with Madame, and knew her personally. It was scarcely two months since he had last seen her, on which occasion after delivering to her Royal Highness the news from France, he had received her last instructions in return. It was he who had come into La Vendée to tell the adherents to hold themselves in readiness. "Aha!" exclaimed the Marquis de Souday, with a motion of the lips which meant that he did not hold lawyers in cherished admiration, "M. le Commissaire-général Pascal." "Who brings news, apparently," said Petit-Pierre, with the evident intention of drawing upon himself the attention of the new-comer. The latter, when he heard the voice, turned immediately to the young man, who made him an almost imperceptible sign with lips and eyes, which, however, sufficed to let him know what was expected of him. "News? Yes," he said. "Good or bad?" asked Louis Renaud. "Mixed. But we'll begin with the good." "Go on." "Her Royal Highness has crossed the South successfully, and is now safe and sound in La Vendée." "Are you sure of that?" asked the Marquis de Souday and Louis Renaud in one breath. "As sure as that I see you all five here in good health," replied Pascal. "Now let us go to the other news."