THE ROAD TO THE SCAFFOLD  
About two o'clock the noise of a carriage was heard. It was Coster de Saint-Victor returning with the handbills. As he had been certain of the successful issue of the affair, he had ordered the printer to post a hundred in the town of Vitré.
The handbill read as follows:
You are invited to assist at the execution of Fran?ois Goulin, commissioner-extraordinary of the Directory. He will be executed to-morrow at nine o'clock in the morning, on the road from Vitré to La Guerche, at a place called Moutiers, upon his own guillotine.
General Cadoudal, by whose order this execution takes place, offers the truce of God to all who shall be present at this act of justice.
Georges Cadoudal.
From his camp at La Guerche.
In passing through Etrelles, Saint-Germain du Pinel and Moutiers, Coster had left copies with the inhabitants, whom he had awakened for the purpose, and whom he charged to inform their neighbors of the good fortune that was in store for them on the following day. Nor had any of these people complained of being awakened. A commissioner of the Republic is not executed every day.
Horses were harnessed to the trees that had been felled in that direction, as the Republicans had done at the other end of the ravine, in order to make the road passable.
At two o'clock, as had been agreed, Cadoudal gave the signal to his men, who took up their places behind the thickets where they had fought during the day.
Half an hour earlier Branche-d'Or, Chante-en-Hiver and[Pg 514] his twenty men had started off on the road to Chateau-Giron, dressed as hussars. An hour passed in absolute silence. The Chouans could hear the sentinels calling from one to another from where they were posted.
About a quarter to three the disguised Chouans appeared at the end of the main street in La Guerche, and, after a moment's parley with the sentinel, were directed to the town-hall where Colonel Hulot was lodged. But Branche-d'Or and Chante-en-Hiver were not so simple as to follow the main thoroughfares of the town; they took to the lanes, where they might have been thought a patrol watching over the safety of the town.
They went thus to the house where Fran?ois Goulin lodged. There everything passed off as Cadoudal had foreseen. The sentinel at the guillotine, seeing the little troop approach from the centre of the town, was not at all alarmed, and they had a pistol at his throat before he suspected that they had aught to say to him. The Republicans, taken by surprise in the house where they were asleep, made no resistance. Fran?ois Goulin was caught in his bed, and had been rolled up and tied in his sheet before he had time to utter a single cry of alarm.
As for the executioner, he and his assistant were lodged in a little pavilion in the garden, and as Cadoudal had foretold, the Republicans themselves, when apprised of the object of the expedition, pointed out the hole where the two foul creatures were sleeping. The Blues promised furthermore to take and distribute the bills, and to ask Colonel Hulot's permission to be present at the execution.
A rocket went up from the hill at three o'clock in the morning, announcing to Cadoudal and his men that the expedition had been successfully terminated. And at the same time they caught the echo of the rumbling of a heavy cart which was conveying one of the finest specimens of Monsieur Guillotin's invention.
Seeing that his men were not pursued, Cadoudal called the Chouans, and they removed the dead bodies from the[Pg 515] middle of the road, that the wagon might not be impeded in its progress. It was not until they were half-way down the hill that they heard the first blast of the trumpets and the first beats of the drums.
The fact is that no one had been in any haste to inform Colonel Hulot. The one who was charged with the duty did not forget to take with him a number of the handbills; and instead of first reporting the audacious deed which Cadoudal's men had just perpetrated, he began by thrusting a handful of the bills under his eyes. Then, as they told the colonel nothing, he was forced to elicit the necessary information by a series of questions which brought forth the truth bit by bit. He finally heard it all, however, and flew into a terrible passion, ordering a hot pursuit of the Whites and the rescue of the Government commissioner at any cost.
Then the trumpets had sounded and the drums beat. But the officers wheedled their old colonel until they disarmed his anger, and obtained a tacit permission to go, at their own risk and peril, to see this execution which the colonel himself was dying to witness. But he knew that this was impossible, and that he would only jeopardize his own head by such an act; he therefore contented himself with telling his secretary, who had not dared to ask leave, to go with the other officers and bring him an exact report. The young man jumped for joy when he learned that he was to go and see Fran?ois Goulin's head cut off.
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