He had two comrades with him in his recruiting party; and though they were of very different characters, they were almost equally serviceable.  One was his friend and priest, the Cure of St. Laud, and the other was his servant, Jacques Chapeau.  The Cure had no scrupulous compunction in using his sacerdotal authority as a priest, when the temporal influence of Larochejaquelin, as landlord, was insufficient to induce a countryman to leave his wife and home to seek honour under the walls of Saumur.  The peasants were all willing to oppose the republican troops, should they come into their own neighbourhood to collect conscripts; they were ready to attack any town where republican soldiers were quartered, providing they were not required to go above a day’s march from their own homes; but many objected to enrol themselves for any length of time, to bind themselves as it were to a soldier’s trade, and to march under arms to perform service at a distance from their farms, which to them seemed considerable.  With such men as these, and with their wives and sisters, Henri argued, and used his blandest eloquence, and was usually successful; but when he failed, the Cure was not slow in having recourse to the irresistable thunders of the church.

No one could have been fitter for the duties of a recruiting-sergeant than Jacques Chapeau; and to his great natural talents in that line, he added a patriotic zeal, which he copied from his master.  No one could be more zealous in the service of the King, and for the glory of La Vendee, than was Jacques Chapeau.  Jacques had been in Paris with his master, and finding that all his fellow-servants in the metropolis were admirers of the revolution, he had himself acquired a strong revolutionary tendency.  His party in Paris had been the extreme Ultra-Democrats:  he had been five or six times at the Jacobins, three or four times at the Cordeliers; he had learnt to look on a lamp-rope as the proper destination of an aristocrat, and considered himself equal to anybody, bu his master, and his master’s friends.  On Henri’s return to La Vendee, he had imbued himself with a high tone of loyalty, without any difficulty or constraint on his feelings; indeed, he was probably unaware that he had changed his party:  he had an appetite for strong politics, was devotedly attached to his master, and had no prudential misgivings whatsoever.  He had already been present at one or two affairs in which his party had been victorious, and war seemed to him twice more exciting, twice more delightful than the French Opera, or even the Jacobin Clubs.