We must now return to Henri Larochejaquelin.  He had taken with him two hundred of the best men from the parishes of St. Aubin, St. Laud and Echanbroignes; four or five officers accompanied him, among whom was a young lad, just fourteen years of age; his name was Arthur Mondyon, and he was a cadet from a noble family in Poitou; in the army he had at first been always called Le Petit Chevalier.  His family had all emigrated, and he had been left at school in Paris; but on the breaking out of the wars he had run away from school, had forged himself a false passport into La Vendee, and declared his determination of fighting for his King.  De Lescure had tried much to persuade him to stay at Clisson, but in vain; he had afterwards been attached to a garrison that was kept in the town of Chatillon, as he would then be in comparative safety; but the little Chevalier had a will of his own; he would not remain within walls while fighting was going on, and he had insisted on accompanying Larochejaquelin to Saumur.  He was now installed as Henri’s aide-de-camp.

Jacques Chapeau also accompanied the party who were to make their way into the town through the water.  The men were all armed with muskets and bayonets, but their muskets were not loaded, nor did they carry any powder with them; it would have been useless in the attack they were about to make, and was much wanted elsewhere.

Henri was at his post about the time at which de Lescure was preparing to cross the bridge at Fouchard.  It was an awful looking place at which ha had to make his entrance there was certainly a considerable breach in the wall, and the fragments of it had fallen into the fosse, so as to lessen its width; but, nevertheless, there was full twenty feet of running water to cross, which had more the appearance of a branch of the river Loire, than of a moat round a town.

Henri saw that his men looked a little alarmed at what they had to go through; he had a light straw hat on his head, and taking it off, he threw it into the water, a little above the point he had to pass, and as the running water carried it down he said: 

“Whoever gives me that on the other side will be my friend for life.”  And as he spoke he himself leapt into the water, and swam across.

Jacques made a plunge for the hat:  had it been in the middle of the Loire he would have gone after it under similar circumstances, though he couldn’t swim a stroke; he did not go near the hat however, but went head over heels into the water; the impetus carried him through, and he was the second to scramble upon the broken mortar on the other side.  The Chevalier was more active; he leapt in and seized the hat as it was going down the stream, and swimming like a young duck, brought it back to its owner.

“Ah!  Chevalier,” said Henri, reproaching him playfully, and helping him up out of the water, “you have robbed some poor fellow of a chance; you, you know, cannot be more my friend, than you already are.”