Александр Дюма
The Companions of Jehu
Bonaparte looked at the stranger again. It was evident that Morgan was a pseudonym, assumed to hide his real name. Then, turning his eyes on the letter, he read:
January 3, 1800.
Whatever may be their apparent conduct, monsieur, men like you never inspire distrust. You have accepted an exalted post, and I thank you for so doing. You know, better than others, that force and power are needed to make the happiness of a great nation. Save France from her own madness, and you will fulfil the desire of my heart; restore her king, and future generations will bless your memory. If you doubt my gratitude, choose your own place, determine the future of your friends. As for my principles, I am a Frenchman, clement by nature, still more so by judgment. No! the conqueror of Lodi, Castiglione and Arcola, the conqueror of Italy and Egypt, cannot prefer an empty celebrity to fame. Lose no more precious time. We can secure the glory of France. I say we, because I have need of Bonaparte for that which he cannot achieve without me. General, the eyes of Europe are upon you, glory awaits you, and I am eager to restore my people to happiness.
LOUIS.
Bonaparte turned to the young man, who stood erect, motionless and silent as a statue.
“Do you know the contents of this letter?” he asked.
The young man bowed. “Yes, citizen First Consul.”
“It was sealed, however.”
“It was sent unsealed under cover to the person who intrusted it to me. And before doing so he made me read it, that I might know its full importance.”
“Can I know the name of the person who intrusted it to you?”
“Georges Cadoudal.”
Bonaparte started slightly.
“Do you know Georges Cadoudal?” he asked.
“He is my friend.”
“Why did he intrust it to you rather than to another?”
“Because he knew that in telling me to deliver the letter to you with my own hand it would be done.”
“You have certainly kept your promise, sir.”
“Not altogether yet, citizen First Consul.”
“How do you mean? Haven’t you delivered it to me?”
“Yes, but I promised to bring back an answer.”
“But if I tell you I will not give one.”
“You will have answered; not precisely as I could have wished, but it will be an answer.”
Bonaparte reflected for a few moments. Then shaking his shoulders to rid himself of his thoughts, he said: “They are fools.”
“Who, citizen?” asked Morgan.
“Those who write me such letters – fools, arch fools. Do they take me for a man who patterns his conduct by the past? Play Monk! What good would it do? Bring back another Charles II.? No, faith, it is not worth while. When a man has Toulon, the 13th Vendemiaire, Lodi, Castiglione, Arcola, Rivoli and the Pyramids behind him, he’s no Monk. He has the right to aspire to more than a duchy of Albemarle, and the command by land and sea of the forces of his Majesty King Louis XVIII.”
“For that reason you are asked to make your own conditions, citizen First Consul.”
Bonaparte started at the sound of that voice as if he had forgotten that any one was present.
“Not counting,” he went on, “that it is a ruined family, a dead branch of a rotten trunk. The Bourbons have so intermarried with one another that the race is depraved; Louis XIV. exhausted all its sap, all its vigor. – You know history, sir?” asked Bonaparte, turning to the young man.
“Yes, general,” he replied; “at least as well as a ci-devant can know it.”
“Well, you must have observed in history, especially in that of France, that each race has its point of departure, its culmination, and its decadence. Look at the direct line of the Capets; starting from Hugues Capet, they attained their highest grandeur in Philippe Auguste and Louis XI., and fell with Philippe V. and Charles IV. Take the Valois; starting with Philippe VI., they culminated in François I. and fell with Charles IX. and Henry III. See the Bourbons; starting with Henry IV., they have their culminating point in Louis XIV. and fall with Louis XV. and Louis XVI. – only they fall lower than the others; lower in debauchery with Louis XV., lower in misfortune with Louis XVI. You talk to me of the Stuarts, and show me the example of Monk. Will you tell me who succeeded Charles II.? James II. And who to James II.? William of Orange, a usurper. Would it not have been better, I ask you, if Monk had put the crown on his own head? Well, if I was fool enough to restore Louis XVIII. to the throne, like Charles II. he would have no children, and, like James II., his brother Charles X. would succeed him, and like him would be driven out by some William of Orange. No, no! God has not put the destiny of this great and glorious country we call France into my hands that I should cast it back to those who have gambled with it and lost it.”
“Permit me, general, to remark that I did not ask you for all this.”
“But I, I ask you – ”
“I think you are doing me the honor to take me for posterity.”
Bonaparte started, turned round, saw to whom he was speaking, and was silent.
“I only want,” said Morgan, with a dignity which surprised the man whom he addressed, “a yes or a no.”
“And why do you want that?”
“To know whether we must continue to war against you as an enemy, or fall at your feet as a savior.”
“War,” said Bonaparte, “war! Madmen, they who war with me! Do they not see that I am the elect of God?”
“Attila said the same thing.”
“Yes; but he was the elect of destruction; I, of the new era. The grass withered where he stepped; the harvest will ripen where I pass the plow. War? Tell me what has become of those who have made it against me? They lie upon the plains of Piedmont, of Lombardy and Cairo!”
“You forget the Vendée; the Vendée is still afoot.”
“Afoot, yes! but her leaders? Cathelineau, Lescure, La Rochejaquelin, d’Elbée, Bonchamps, Stoffiet, Charette?”
“You are speaking of men only; the men have been mown down, it is true; but the principle is still afoot, and for it are fighting Autichamp, Suzannet, Grignon, Frotté, Châtillon, Cadoudal. The younger may not be worth the elder, but if they die as their elders died, what more can you ask?”
“Let them beware! If I determine upon a campaign against the Vendée I shall send neither Santerre nor Rossignol!”
“The Convention sent Kléber, and the Directory, Hoche!”
“I shall not send; I shall go myself.”
“Nothing worse can happen to them than to be killed like Lescure, or shot like Charette.”
“It may happen that I pardon them.”
“Cato taught us how to escape the pardon of Cæsar.”
“Take care; you are quoting a Republican!”
“Cato was one of those men whose example can be followed, no matter to what party they belong.”
“And suppose I were to tell you that I hold the Vendée in the hollow of my hand?”
“You!”
“And that within three months, she will lay down her arms if I choose?”
The young man shook his head.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I hesitate to believe you.”
“If I affirm to you that what I say is true; if I prove it by telling you the means, or rather the men, by whom I shall bring this about?”
“If a man like General Bonaparte affirms a thing, I shall believe it; and if that thing is the pacification of the Vendée, I shall say in my turn: ‘Beware! Better the Vendée fighting than the Vendée conspiring. The Vendée fighting means the sword, the Vendée conspiring means the dagger.’”
“Oh! I know your dagger,” said Bonaparte. “Here it is.”
And he drew from a drawer the dagger he had taken from Roland and laid it on the table within reach of Morgan’s hand.
“But,” he added, “there is some distance between Bonaparte’s breast and an assassin’s dagger. Try.”
And he advanced to the young man with a flaming eye.
“I did not come here to assassinate you,” said the young man, coldly. “Later, if I consider your death indispensable to the cause, I shall do all in my power, and if I fail it will not be because you are Marius and I the Cimbrian. Have you anything else to say to me, citizen First Consul?” concluded the young man, bowing.
“Yes. Tell Cadoudal that when he is ready to fight the enemy, instead of Frenchmen, I have a colonel’s commission ready signed in my desk for him.”
“Cadoudal commands, not a regiment, but an army. You were unwilling to retrograde from Bonaparte to Monk; why should you expect him to descend from general to colonel? Have you nothing else to say to me, citizen First Consul?”
“Yes. Have you any way of transmitting my reply to the Comte de Provençe?”
“You mean King Louis XVIII.?”
“Don’t let us quibble over words. To him who wrote to me.”
“His envoy is now at the camp at Aubiers.”
“Well, I have changed my mind; I shall send him an answer. These Bourbons are so blind that this one would misinterpret my silence.”
And Bonaparte, sitting down at his desk, wrote the following letter with a care that showed he wished to make it legible:
I have received your letter, monsieur. I thank you for the good opinion you express in it of me. You must not wish for your return to France; it could only be over a hundred thousand dead bodies.
Sacrifice your own interests to the repose and welfare of France.
History will applaud you. I am not insensible to the misfortunes of your family, and I shall hear with pleasure that you are surrounded with all that could contribute to the tranquillity of your retreat. BONAPARTE.
Then, folding and sealing the letter, he directed it to “Monsieur le Comte de Provençe,” and handed it to Morgan. Then he called Roland, as if he knew the latter were not far off.
“General?” said the young officer, appearing instantly.
“Conduct this gentleman to the street,” said Bonaparte. “Until then you are responsible for him.”
Roland bowed in sign of obedience, let the young man, who said not a word, pass before him, and then followed. But before leaving, Morgan cast a last glance at Bonaparte.
The latter was still standing, motionless and silent, with folded arms, his eyes fixed upon the dagger, which occupied his thoughts far more than he was willing to admit even to himself.
As they crossed Roland’s room, the Chief of the Companions of Jehu gathered up his cloak and pistols. While he was putting them in his belt, Roland remarked: “The citizen First Consul seems to have shown you a dagger which I gave him.”
“Yes, monsieur,” replied Morgan.
“Did you recognize it?”
“Not that one in particular; all our daggers are alike.”
“Well,” said Roland, “I will tell you whence it came.”
“Ah! where was that?”
“From the breast of a friend of mine, where your Companions, possibly you yourself, thrust it.”
“Possibly,” replied the young man carelessly. “But your friend must have exposed himself to punishment.”
“My friend wished to see what was happening at night in the Chartreuse.”
“He did wrong.”
“But I did the same wrong the night before, and nothing happened to me.”
“Probably because some talisman protects you.”
“Monsieur, let me tell you something. I am a straight-forward man who walks by daylight. I have a horror of all that is mysterious.”
“Happy those who can walk the highroads by daylight, Monsieur de Montrevel!”
“That is why I am going to tell you the oath I made, Monsieur Morgan. As I drew the dagger you saw from my friend’s breast, as carefully as possible, that I might not draw his soul with it, I swore that henceforward it should be war to the death between his assassins and myself. It was largely to tell you that that I gave you a pledge of safety.”
“That is an oath I hope to see you forget, Monsieur de Montrevel.”
“It is an oath I shall keep under all circumstances, Monsieur Morgan; and you would be most kind if you would furnish me with an opportunity as soon as possible.”
“In what way, sir?”
“Well, for example, by accepting a meeting with me, either in the Bois de Boulogne or at Vincennes. We don’t need to say that we are fighting because you or one of your friends stabbed Lord Tanlay. No; we can say anything you please.” (Roland reflected a moment.) “We can say the duel is on account of the eclipse that takes place on the 12th of next month. Does the pretext suit you?”
“The pretext would suit me,” replied Morgan, in a tone of sadness of which he seemed incapable, “if the duel itself could take place. You have taken an oath, and you mean to keep it, you say. Well, every initiate who enters the Company of Jehu swears that he will not expose in any personal quarrel a life that belongs to the cause and not to himself.”
“Oh! So that you assassinate, but will not fight.”
“You are mistaken. We sometimes fight.”
“Have the goodness to point out an occasion when I may study that phenomenon.”
“Easily enough. If you and five or six men, as resolute as yourself, will take your places in some diligence carrying government money, and will defend it against our attack, the occasion you seek will come. But, believe me, do better than that; do not come in our way.”
“Is that a threat, sir?” asked the young man, raising his head.
“No,” replied Morgan, in a gentle, almost supplicating voice, “it is an entreaty.”
“Is it addressed to me in particular, or would you include others?”
“I make it to you in particular;” and the chief of the Companions of Jehu dwelt upon the last word.
“Ah!” exclaimed the young man, “then I am so fortunate as to interest you?”
“As a brother,” replied Morgan, in the same soft, caressing tone.
“Well, well,” said Roland, “this is decidedly a wager.”
Bourrienne entered at that moment.
“Roland,” he said, “the First Consul wants you.”
“Give me time to conduct this gentleman to the street, and I’ll be with him.”
“Hurry up; you know he doesn’t like to wait.”
“Will you follow me, sir?” Roland said to his mysterious companion.
“I am at your orders, sir.”
“Come, then,” And Roland, taking the same path by which he had brought Morgan, took him back, not to the door opening on the garden (the garden was closed), but to that on the street. Once there, he stopped and said: “Sir, I gave you my word, and I have kept it faithfully, But that there may be no misunderstanding between us, have the goodness to tell me that you understand it to have been for this one time and for to-day only.”
“That was how I understood it, sir.”
“You give me back my word then?”
“I should like to keep it, sir; but I recognize that you are free to take it back.”
“That is all I wish to know. Au revoir! Monsieur Morgan.”
“Permit me not to offer you the same wish, Monsieur de Montrevel.”
The two young men bowed with perfect courtesy, Roland re-entered the Luxembourg, and Morgan, following the line of shadow projected by the walls, took one of the little streets to the Place Saint-Sulpice.
It is he whom we are now to follow.
CHAPTER XXVI. THE BALL OF THE VICTIMS
After taking about a hundred steps Morgan removed his mask. He ran more risk of being noticed in the streets of Paris as a masked man than with uncovered face.
When he reached the Rue Taranne he knocked at the door of a small furnished lodging-house at the corner of that street and the Rue du Dragon, took a candlestick from a table, a key numbered 12 from a nail, and climbed the stairs without exciting other attention than a well-known lodger would returning home. The clock was striking ten as he closed the door of his room. He listened attentively to the strokes, the light of his candle not reaching as far as the chimney-piece. He counted ten.
“Good!” he said to himself; “I shall not be too late.”
In spite of this probability, Morgan seemed determined to lose no time. He passed a bit of tinder-paper under the heater on the hearth, which caught fire instantly. He lighted four wax-candles, all there were in the room, placed two on the mantel-shelf and two on a bureau opposite, and spread upon the bed a complete dress of the Incroyable of the very latest fashion. It consisted of a short coat, cut square across the front and long behind, of a soft shade between a pale-green and a pearl-gray; a waistcoat of buff plush, with eighteen mother-of-pearl buttons; an immense white cravat of the finest cambric; light trousers of white cashmere, decorated with a knot of ribbon where they buttoned above the calves, and pearl-gray silk stockings, striped transversely with the same green as the coat, and delicate pumps with diamond buckles. The inevitable eye-glass was not forgotten. As for the hat, it was precisely the same in which Carle Vernet painted his dandy of the Directory.
When these things were ready, Morgan waited with seeming impatience. At the end of five minutes he rang the bell. A waiter appeared.
“Hasn’t the wig-maker come?” asked Morgan.
In those days wig-makers were not yet called hair-dressers.
“Yes, citizen,” replied the waiter, “he came, but you had not yet returned, so he left word that he’d come back. Some one knocked just as you rang; it’s probably – ”
“Here, here,” cried a voice on the stairs.
“Ah! bravo,” exclaimed Morgan. “Come in, Master Cadenette; you must make a sort of Adonis of me.”
“That won’t be difficult, Monsieur le Baron,” replied the wig-maker.
“Look here, look here; do you mean to compromise me, citizen Cadenette?”
“Monsieur le Baron, I entreat you, call me Cadenette; you’ll honor me by that proof of familiarity; but don’t call me citizen. Fie; that’s a revolutionary denomination! Even in the worst of the Terror I always called my wife Madame Cadenette. Now, excuse me for not waiting for you; but there’s a great ball in the Rue du Bac this evening, the ball of the Victims (the wig-maker emphasized this word). I should have thought that M. le Baron would be there.”
“Why,” cried Morgan, laughing; “so you are still a royalist, Cadenette?”
The wig-maker laid his hand tragically on his heart.
“Monsieur le Baron,” said he, “it is not only a matter of conscience, but a matter of state.”
“Conscience, I can understand that, Master Cadenette, but state! What the devil has the honorable guild of wigmakers to do with politics?”
“What, Monsieur le Baron?” said Cadenette, all the while getting ready to dress his client’s hair; “you ask me that? You, an aristocrat!”
“Hush, Cadenette!”
“Monsieur le Baron, we ci-devants can say that to each other.”
“So you are a ci-devant?”
“To the core! In what style shall I dress M. le Baron’s hair?”
“Dog’s ears, and tied up behind.”
“With a dash of powder?”
“Two, if you like, Cadenette.”
“Ah! monsieur, when one thinks that for five years I was the only man who had an atom of powder ‘à la maréchale.’ Why, Monsieur le Baron, a man was guillotined for owning a box of powder!”
“I’ve known people who were guillotined for less than that, Cadenette. But explain how you happen to be a ci-devant. I like to understand everything.”
“It’s very simple, Monsieur le Baron. You admit, don’t you, that among the guilds there were some that were more or less aristocratic.”
“Beyond doubt; accordingly as they were nearer to the higher classes of society.”
“That’s it, Monsieur le Baron. Well, we had the higher classes by the hair of their head. I, such as you see me, I have dressed Madame de Polignac’s hair; my father dressed Madame du Barry’s; my grandfather, Madame de Pompadour’s. We had our privileges, Monsieur; we carried swords. It is true, to avoid the accidents that were liable to crop up among hotheads like ourselves, our swords were usually of wood; but at any rate, if they were not the actual thing, they were very good imitations. Yes, Monsieur le Baron,” continued Cadenette with a sigh, “those days were the good days, not only for the wig-makers, but for all France. We were in all the secrets, all the intrigues; nothing was hidden from us. And there is no known instance, Monsieur le Baron, of a wig-maker betraying a secret. Just look at our poor queen; to whom did she trust her diamonds? To the great, the illustrious Leonard, the prince of wig-makers. Well, Monsieur le Baron, two men alone overthrew the scaffolding of a power that rested on the wigs of Louis XIV., the puffs of the Regency, the frizettes of Louis-XV., and the cushions of Marie Antoinette.”
“And those two men, those levellers, those two revolutionaries, who were they, Cadenette? that I may doom them, so far as it lies in my power, to public execration.”
“M. Rousseau and citizen Talma: Monsieur Rousseau who said that absurdity, ‘We must return to Nature,’ and citizen Talma, who invented the Titus head-dress.”
“That’s true, Cadenette; that’s true.”
“When the Directory came in there was a moment’s hope. M. Barras never gave up powder, and citizen Moulins stuck to his queue. But, you see, the 18th Brumaire has knocked it all down; how could any one friz Bonaparte’s hair! Ah! there,” continued Cadenette, puffing out the dog’s ears of his client – “there’s aristocratic hair for you, soft and fine as silk, and takes the tongs so well one would think you wore a wig. See, Monsieur le Baron, you wanted to be as handsome as Adonis! Ah! if Venus had seen you, it’s not of Adonis that Mars would have been jealous!”
And Cadenette, now at the end of his labors and satisfied with the result, presented a hand-mirror to Morgan, who examined himself complacently.
“Come, come!” he said to the wig-maker, “you are certainly an artist, my dear fellow! Remember this style, for if ever they cut off my head I shall choose to have it dressed like that, for there will probably be women at my execution.”
“And M. le Baron wants them to regret him,” said the wig-maker gravely.
“Yes, and in the meantime, my dear Cadenette, here is a crown to reward your labors. Have the goodness to tell them below to call a carriage for me.”
Cadenette sighed.
“Monsieur le Baron,” said he, “time was when I should have answered: ‘Show yourself at court with your hair dressed like that, and I shall be paid.’ But there is no court now, Monsieur le Baron, and one must live. You shall have your carriage.”
With which Cadenette sighed again, slipped Morgan’s crown in his pocket, made the reverential bow of wig-makers and dancing-masters, and left the young man to complete his toilet.
The head being now dressed, the rest was soon done; the cravat alone took time, owing to the many failures that occurred; but Morgan concluded the difficult task with an experienced hand, and as eleven o’clock was striking he was ready to start. Cadenette had not forgotten his errand; a hackney-coach was at the door. Morgan jumped into it, calling out: “Rue du Bac, No. 60.”
The coach turned into the Rue de Grenelle, went up the Rue du Bac, and stopped at No. 60.
“Here’s a double fare, friend,” said Morgan, “on condition that you don’t stand before the door.”
The driver took the three francs and disappeared around the corner of the Rue de Varennes. Morgan glanced up the front of the house; it seemed as though he must be mistaken, so dark and silent was it. But he did not hesitate; he rapped in a peculiar fashion.
The door opened. At the further end of the courtyard was a building, brilliantly lighted. The young man went toward it, and, as he approached, the sound of instruments met his ear. He ascended a flight of stairs and entered the dressing-room. There he gave his cloak to the usher whose business it was to attend to the wraps.
“Here is your number,” said the usher. “As for your weapons, you are to place them in the gallery where you can find them easily.”
Morgan put the number in his trousers pocket, and entered the great gallery transformed into an arsenal. It contained a complete collection of arms of all kinds, pistols, muskets, carbines, swords, and daggers. As the ball might at any moment be invaded by the police, it was necessary that every dancer be prepared to turn defender at an instant’s notice. Laying his weapons aside, Morgan entered the ballroom.
We doubt if any pen could give the reader an adequate idea of the scene of that ball. Generally, as the name “Ball of the Victims” indicated, no one was admitted except by the strange right of having relatives who had either been sent to the scaffold by the Convention or the Commune of Paris, blown to pieces by Collot d’Herbois, or drowned by Carrier. As, however, the victims guillotined during the three years of the Terror far outnumbered the others, the dresses of the majority of those who were present were the clothes of the victims of the scaffold. Thus, most of the young girls, whose mothers and older sisters had fallen by the hands of the executioner, wore the same costume their mothers and sisters had worn for that last lugubrious ceremony; that is to say, a white gown and red shawl, with their hair cut short at the nape of the neck. Some added to this costume, already so characteristic, a detail that was even more significant; they knotted around their necks a thread of scarlet silk, fine as the blade of a razor, which, as in Faust’s Marguerite, at the Witches’ Sabbath, indicated the cut of the knife between the throat and the collar bone.
As for the men who were in the same case, they wore the collars of their coats turned down behind, those of their shirt wide open, their necks bare, and their hair, cut short.
But many had other rights of entrance to this ball besides that of having Victims in their families; some had made victims themselves. These latter were increasing. There were present men of forty or forty-five years of age, who had been trained in the boudoirs of the beautiful courtesans of the seventeenth century – who had known Madame du Barry in the attics of Versailles, Sophie Arnoult with M. de Lauraguais, La Duthé with the Comte d’Artois – who had borrowed from the courtesies of vice the polish with which they covered their ferocity. They were still young and handsome; they entered a salon, tossing their perfumed locks and their scented handkerchiefs; nor was it a useless precaution, for if the odor of musk or verbena had not masked it they would have smelled of blood.
There were men there twenty-five or thirty years old, dressed with extreme elegance, members of the association of Avengers, who seemed possessed with the mania of assassination, the lust of slaughter, the frenzy of blood, which no blood could quench – men who, when the order came to kill, killed all, friends or enemies; men who carried their business methods into the business of murder, giving their bloody checks for the heads of such or such Jacobins, and paying on sight.
There were younger men, eighteen and twenty, almost children, but children fed, like Achilles, on the marrow of wild beasts, like Pyrrhus, on the flesh of bears; here were the pupil-bandits of Schiller, the apprentice-judges of the Sainte-Vehme – that strange generation that follows great political convulsions, like the Titans after chaos, the hydras after the Deluge; as the vultures and crows follow the carnage.
Here was the spectre of iron impassible, implacable, inflexible, which men call Retaliation; and this spectre mingled with the guests. It entered the gilded salons; it signalled with a look, a gesture, a nod, and men followed where it led. It was, as says the author from whom we have borrowed these hitherto unknown but authentic details, “a merry lust for extermination.”
The Terror had affected great cynicism in clothes, a Spartan austerity in its food, the profound contempt of a barbarous people for arts and enjoyments. The Thermidorian reaction was, on the contrary, elegant, opulent, adorned; it exhausted all luxuries, all voluptuous pleasures, as in the days of Louis XV.; with one addition, the luxury of vengeance, the lust of blood.
Fréron’s name was given to the youth of the day, which was called the jeunesse Fréron, or the jéunesse dorée (gilded youth). Why Fréron? Why should he rather than others receive that strange and fatal honor?
I cannot tell you – my researches (those who know me will do me the justice to admit that when I have an end in view, I do not count them) – my researches have not discovered an answer. It was a whim of Fashion, and Fashion is the one goddess more capricious than Fortune.
Our readers will hardly know to-day who Fréron was. The Fréron who was Voltaire’s assailant was better known than he who was the patron of these elegant assassins; one was the son of the other. Louis Stanislas was son of Elie-Catherine. The father died of rage when Miromesnil, Keeper of the Seals, suppressed his journal. The other, irritated by the injustices of which his father had been the victim, had at first ardently embraced the revolutionary doctrines. Instead of the “Année Littéraire,” strangled to death in 1775, he created the “Orateur du Peuple,” in 1789. He was sent to the Midi on a special mission, and Marseilles and Toulon retain to this day the memory of his cruelty. But all was forgotten when, on the 9th Thermidor, he proclaimed himself against Robespierre, and assisted in casting from the altar the Supreme Being, the colossus who, being an apostle, had made himself a god. Fréron, repudiated by the Mountain, which abandoned him to the heavy jaws of Moise Bayle; Fréron, disdainfully repulsed by the Girondins, who delivered him over to the imprecations of Isnard; Fréron, as the terrible and picturesque orator of the Var said, “Fréron naked and covered with the leprosy of crime,” was accepted, caressed and petted by the Thermidorians. From them he passed into the camp of the royalists, and without any reason whatever for obtaining that fatal honor, found himself suddenly at the head of a powerful party of youth, energy and vengeance, standing between the passions of the day, which led to all, and the impotence of the law, which permitted all.
It was to the midst of this jeunesse Fréron, mouthing its words, slurring its r’s, giving its “word of honor” about everything, that Morgan now made his way.
It must be admitted that this jeunesse, in spite of the clothes it wore, in spite of the memories these clothes evoked, was wildly gay. This seems incomprehensible, but it is true. Explain if you can that Dance of Death at the beginning of the fifteenth century, which, with all the fury of a modern galop, led by Musard, whirled its chain through the very Cemetery of the Innocents, and left amid its tombs fifty thousand of its votaries.
Morgan was evidently seeking some one.
A young dandy, who was dipping into the silver-gilt comfit-box of a charming victim, with an ensanguined finger, the only part of his delicate hand that had escaped the almond paste, tried to stop him, to relate the particulars of the expedition from which he had brought back this bloody trophy. But Morgan smiled, pressed his other hand which was gloved, and contented himself with replying: “I am looking for some one.”
