It is true that they did not go back from their
high resolves, or shrink from the bloody effects of their brave
enterprise, but their talk now was of suffering and death; they
whispered together in twos and threes, at their own door-sills, instead
of shouting in the market-place. Cathelineau was dead, and Foret was
dead, and they were the gallantest of their townsmen. They had now also
heard that everything had been staked on a great battle, and that that
battle had been lost at Cholet--that Bonchamps and d'Elbee had fallen,
and that de Lescure had been wounded and was like to die. They knew that
the whole army was retreating to St. Florent, and that the Republican
troops would soon follow them, headed by Lechelle, whose name already
drove the colour from the cheeks of every woman in La Vendee. They knew
that a crowd of starving wretches would fall, like a swarm of locusts,
on their already nearly empty granaries; and that all the horrors
attendant on a civil war were crowding round their hearths.
It was late in the evening that the news of the battle reached the town,
and early on the next morning the landlord of the auberge was standing
at his door waiting the arrival of Henri Larochejaquelin and de Lescure.
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