ieving
ourselves the instruments of God, according to the Gospel of Bossuet."

As soon as the ladies discovered that the tale related only to a
conversation between the queen and the lawyer, they had begun to whisper
and to show signs of impatience,--interjecting, now and then, little
phrases through his speech. "How wearisome he is!" "My dear, when will
he finish?" were among those which reached my ear.

When the strange little man had ceased speaking the ladies too were
silent; Monsieur Bodard was sound asleep; the surgeon, half drunk;
Monsieur de Calonne was smiling at the lady next him. Lavoisier,
Beaumarchais, and I alone had listened to the lawyer's dream. The
silence at this moment had something solemn about it. The gleam of the
candles seemed to me magical. A sentiment bound all three of us by some
mysterious tie to that singular little man, who made me, strange to say,
conceive, suddenly, the inexplicable influences of fanaticism. Nothing
less than the hollow, cavernous voice of Beaumarchais's neighbor, the
surgeon, could, I think, have roused me.

"I, too, have dreamed," he said.

I looked at him more attentively, and a feeling of some strange horror
came over me. His livid skin, his features, huge and yet ignoble, gave
an exact idea of what you must allow me to call the _scum_ of the earth.
A few bluish-black spots were scattered over his face, like bits of mud,
and his eyes shot forth an evil gleam. The face seemed, perhaps,
darker, more lowering than it was, because of the white hair piled like
hoarfrost on his head.

"That man must have buried many a patient," I whispered to my neighbor
the lawyer.

"I wouldn't trust him with my dog," he answered.

"I hate him involuntarily."

"For my part, I despise him."

"Perhaps we are unjust," I remarked.

"Ha! to-morrow he may be as famous as Volange the actor."

Monsieur de Calonne here motioned us to look at the surgeon, with a
gesture that seemed to say: "I think he'll be very amusing."

"Did you dream of a queen?" asked Beaumarchais.

"No, I dreamed of a People," replied the surgeon, with an emphasis which
made us laugh. "I was then in charge of a patient whose leg I was to
amputate the next day--"

"Did you find the People in the leg of your patient?" asked Monsieur de
Calonne.

"Precisely," replied the surgeon.

"How amusing!" cried Madame de Genlis.

"I was somewhat surprised," went on the speaker, without noticing the
interruption, and