nobles."

"Noble thieves!" cried the patriot, ironically.

"They only take back what was stolen from them," said the rector,
vehemently.

The two men looked at each other in the whites of their eyes, if we
may use a phrase so colloquial. Sitting back in the vehicle was a
third traveller who took no part in the discussion, and preserved a
deep silence. The driver and the patriot and even Gudin paid no
attention to this mute individual; he was, in truth, one of those
uncomfortable, unsocial travellers who are found sometimes in a
stage-coach, like a patient calf that is being carried, bound, to the
nearest market. Such travellers begin by filling their legal space,
and end by sleeping, without the smallest respect for their fellow-
beings, on a neighbor's shoulder. The patriot, Gudin, and the driver
had let him alone, thinking him asleep, after discovering that it was
useless to talk to a man whose stolid face betrayed an existence spent
in measuring yards of linen, and an intellect employed in selling them
at a good percentage above cost. This fat little man, doubled-up in
his corner, opened his porcelain-blue eyes every now and then, and
looked at each speaker with a sort of terror. He appeared to be afraid
of his fellow-travellers and to care very little about the Chouans.
When he looked at the driver, however, they seemed to be a pair of
free-masons. Just then the first volley of musketry was heard on La
Pelerine. Coupiau, frightened, stopped the coach.

"Oh! oh!" said the priest, as if he had some means of judging, "it is
a serious engagement; there are many men."