"No one is to interfere between me and Agatha Larochejaquelin.

She is to be my prize and my reward." "I will be as good as my word," said Santerre, "as long as you are true to yours; but I own I pity the young lady the treatment she is likely to receive from her lover," and as he spoke, he rode up to the front door of the house, accompanied by Denot and a company of men on horseback.
The immediate arrival of republican soldiers in the neighbourhood of Durbelliere was neither expected, or even feared by the inhabitants of the chateau, or it would not have been left by Henri, as it had been, perfectly undefended.

The truth was this: the royalists had hitherto been so very generally successful against the republicans; and that, when every odds of number, arms, and position had been in favour of their enemies, that they had learnt to look with contempt upon the blues, as they called them.

Hitherto the royalists had always been the attacking party; the republicans had contented themselves with endeavouring to keep their position within the towns; and when driven from thence, had retreated altogether out of the revolted district.
Except lately at Nantes, the Vendeans had as yet incurred no great reverse; they had not, therefore, learnt to fear that their houses would be attacked and burnt; their corn and cattle destroyed; and even their wives and children massacred.

The troops which had now been dispatched by the Convention for the subjection of the country, were of a very different character from those with whom the Vendeans had as yet contended, and the royalists were not long before they experienced all the horrors of a civil war, in which quarter was refused them by their enemies, and mercy even to children was considered as a crime.
When Santerre rode up to the door of the chateau, ten men might have taken possession of Durbelliere.