Santerre and Father Jerome were seated together on a sofa, and
the Chevalier occupied a chair on the other side of a table on which the
prisoner and the priest were leaning. When Santerre found that he and
his men were in the hands of the royalist peasants, he at first rather
lost both his temper and his presence of mind. He saw at once that
resistance was out of the question, and that there was very little
chance that he would be able to escape; he began to accuse himself of
rashness in having accepted from the Convention the very disagreeable
commission which had brought him into his present plight, and to wish
that he was once more among his legitimate adherents in the Quartier St.
Antoine. He soon, however, regained his equanimity. Those whom he had
in his rough manner treated well, returned the compliment; and he
perceived that, though he would probably be kept a prisoner, his life
would not be in danger, and that the royalists were not inclined to
treat him either with insult or severity.
He by degrees got into conversation with the Chevalier; and before the
day was over, even Father Jerome, much as he abhorred a republican, and
especially a leader of republicans, and an infidel, as he presumed
Santerre to be, forgot his disgust, and chatted freely with the captive
Commissioner.
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