"Rohan Gwenfern!" cried the sergeant, in a voice that rang like a trumpet through the length of the town hall.
No one answered. The crowd of young Kromlaix men looked at each other in consternation. Was the handsomest, the strongest, and the most daring lad in their village a coward? It was the dark year of 1813, when Napoleon was draining France of all its manhood. Even the only sons of poor widowed women, such as Rohan Gwenfern was, were no longer exempted from conscription. Having lost half a million men amid the snows of Russia, Napoleon had called for 200,000 more soldiers, and the little Breton fishing village of Kromlaix had to provide twenty-five recruits.
"Rohan Gwenfern!" cried the sergeant again.
The mayor rose up behind the ballot-box on the large table, about which the villagers were gathered, and looked around in vain for the splendid figure of the young fisherman.
"Where is your nephew?" he said to Corporal Derval, in an angry voice.
Derval, one of Napoleon's veterans, who had been pensioned after losing his leg at Austerlitz, looked at his pretty niece, Marcelle, with a strange pallor on his furrowed, sunburnt face.
"Rohan was too ill to come," said Marcelle, with a troubled look in her sweet grey eyes. "I will draw in his name."
"Very well, my pretty lass," said the mayor, his grim face softening into a smile as he looked at the beautiful girl, "you shall draw for him, and bring him luck."
Marcelle's hand trembled as she put it into the ballot-box. She let it stay there so long that some of the soldiers began to laugh. But the village women, gathered in a dense crowd at the back of the hall, gazed at her with tears in their eyes. They knew what she was doing. She was praying that she might draw a lucky number for her lover, Rohan. Twenty-five conscripts were wanted, and those who drew a paper numbered twenty-six or upwards were free.
"Come, come, my dear!" said the mayor, stroking his moustache, and nodding encouragingly at Marcelle.
She slowly drew forth a paper, and handed it to her uncle, who opened it, read it with a stare, and uttered his usual expletive. "Soul of a crow!" in an awstricken whisper.
"Read it, corporal!" said the mayor, while Marcelle looked wildly at her uncle.
"It is incredible!" said Corporal Derval, handing the paper to the sergeant, with the look of amazement still on his face.
"Rohan Gwenfern--one!" shouted the sergeant, while Marcelle clung to her uncle, and hid her face upon his arm.
Rohan Gwenfern, who had taken a solemn oath that he would never go forth to slay his fellow-men at the bidding of Napoleon, whom he regarded as a horrible, murderous monster, found himself, when he returned to Kromlaix late that evening, in the sorry position of King of the Conscripts. He was a young man who had led a very solitary life, but solitude, instead of making him morbid, had strengthened his natural feelings of pity and affection. His immense physical strength had never been exerted for any evil, and even in the roughest wrestling matches he had never fought brutally or cruelly.
He certainly rejoiced in his splendid powers of body; but he had the gentleness of soul of a poetic mind, as well as the magnanimity that often goes with great strength. There was, indeed, something lion-like about him as he strode up to the door of his cottage, with his mane of yellow hair floating over his broad brows and falling on his shoulders. An eager crowd was waiting for him, and when he appeared, they all shouted.
"Here he is at last!" cried a voice, which he recognised as that of Mikel Grallon. "Three cheers for the King of the Conscripts!"
Some bag-pipe players struck up a merry tune, but Rohan, with a wild face and stern eyes, pushed his way through the throng into his cottage. On a seat by the fire his mother sat weeping, her face covered with her apron; round her was a band of sympathising friends. The scene explained itself in one flash, and Rohan Gwenfern knew his fate. Pale as death, he rushed across the floor to his mother's side, just as a troop of young girls flocked into the house singing the Marseillaise. At their head was Marcelle.
A hard struggle had gone on in the heart of Rohan's sweetheart. She had been overcome with grief when she drew the fatal number. But her dismay had quickly turned into an heroic pride at the thought of her lover becoming a soldier of Napoleon. From her childhood she had learnt from her uncle to admire and worship the great emperor who had led the armies of France from victory to victory, and she did not think that Rohan would refuse to follow him. It is true that she had often heard Gwenfern say that he loathed war; but many other men of Kromlaix had said the same thing; and yet, when the hour came, and they were called to serve in the Grand Army, they had obeyed.
"Look, Rohan!" she cried, holding up in her hand a rosette with a long, coloured streamer. "Look! I have brought this for you."
Each of the conscripts wore a similar badge, and old Corporal Derval had stuck one on his own breast. All the crowd cheered as Marcelle advanced, with bright eyes and flaming cheeks, to her sweetheart.
"Keep back! Do not touch me!" cried Rohan, his face blazing with strange anger.
"The boy's mad!" exclaimed Corporal Derval, in an angry voice.
"Do you not understand, Rohan?" exclaimed Marcelle, terrified by her lover's look. "As you did not come, someone had to draw in your name. I did so, and you are now the King of the Conscripts, and this is your badge. Let me fasten it upon your breast!"
In a moment her soft fingers attached the rosette to his jacket. Rohan did not stir; his eyes were fixed on the ground, but his features worked convulsively.
"Forward now, all of you to the inn!" said Corporal Derval, when the cheering was over. "We will drink the health of Number One!"
As everybody was moving towards the door, Rohan started as if from a trance.
"Stay!" he shouted.
All stood listening, and his widowed mother crept up and clasped his hand.
"You are all mad," he said, in a wild voice, "and I seem to be going mad, too. What is this you tell me about a conscription and an emperor? I do not understand. I only know you are all mad. Napoleon has no right to compel me to fight for him; and if every Frenchman had my heart, he would not reign another day. I refuse to be led like a sheep to the slaughter. He can kill me if he wills, but he cannot force me to kill my fellow-men. You can go if you like, and do his bloody work. Had I the power I would serve him as I serve this badge of his!"
Tearing the rosette from his breast, he cast it into the flaming fire.
"Rohan, for God's sake be silent!" cried Marcelle. "You speak like a madman. It is all my fault. I thought I should bring you good luck by drawing for you. Won't you forgive me?"
The young fisherman looked sadly into his sweetheart's face, and when he saw her wet eyes and quivering lips his heart was stirred. He took her hand and kissed it, but suddenly an ill-favoured face was thrust forward between the two lovers.
"Isn't it a pity," sneered Mikel Grallon, "to see a pretty girl wasting herself on a coward, when----"
He did not complete the sentence, for Rohan stretched out his hand and smote him down. Grallon fell like a log.
A wild cry arose from all the men, the women screamed, even Marcelle shrank back; and Rohan strode to the door, pushing his way out.
"Hold him! Kill him!" shouted some.
"Arrest him!" cried Corporal Derval.
Rohan hurled his opponents right and left like so many ninepins. They fell back and gasped. Then, turning his white face for an instant on Marcelle, her lover passed unmolested out into the darkness.
II.--In the Cathedral of the Sea
Along the wild, rugged shore, a little way from Kromlaix, was an immense cavern of crimson granite, hung with gleaming moss, and washed by the roaring tides of the sea. Its towering walls had been carved by wind and water into thousands of beautiful, fantastical forms, and a dim religious light fell from above through a long, funnel-shaped hole running from the roof of the cavern to the top of the great cliff.