were lifeless. A few pale figures were to be distinguished
at the accustomed resort at the Tuileries; they wondered wherefore the
islanders should approach their ill-fated city--for in the excess of
wretchedness, the sufferers always imagine, that their part of the calamity
is the bitterest, as, when enduring intense pain, we would exchange the
particular torture we writhe under, for any other which should visit a
different part of the frame. They listened to the account the emigrants
gave of their motives for leaving their native land, with a shrug almost of
disdain--"Return," they said, "return to your island, whose sea breezes,
and division from the continent gives some promise of health; if Pestilence
among you has slain its hundreds, with us it has slain its thousands. Are
you not even now more numerous than we are?--A year ago you would have
found only the sick burying the dead; now we are happier; for the pang of
struggle has passed away, and the few you find here are patiently waiting
the final blow. But you, who are not content to die, breathe no longer the
air of France, or soon you will only be a part of her soil."

Thus, by menaces of the sword, they would have driven back those who had
escaped from fire. But the peril left behind was deemed imminent by my
countrymen; that before them doubtful and distant; and soon other feelings
arose to obliterate fear, or to replace it by passions, that ought to have
had no place among a brotherhood of unhappy survivors of the expiring
world.

The more numerous division of emigrants, which arrived first at Paris,
assumed a superiority of rank and power; the second party asserted their
independence. A third was formed by a sectarian, a self-erected prophet,
who, while he attributed all power and rule to God, strove to get the real
command of his comrades into his own hands. This third division consisted
of fewest individuals, but their purpose was more one, their obedience to
their leader more entire, their fortitude and courage more unyielding and
active.

During the whole progress of the plague, the teachers of religion were in
possession of great power; a power of good, if rightly directed, or of
incalculable mischief, if fanaticism or intolerance guided their efforts.
In the present instance, a worse feeling than either of these actuated the
leader. He was an impostor in the most determined sense of the term. A man
who had in early life lost, through the indulgence o