on conversing as before about
the news of the morning. Several hours elapsed without the others having
returned; and at last we began to feel anxious about their fate, when
one of them made his appearance, his heightened color and agitated
expression betokening that something more than common had occurred.

"We were examined with Pichegru," said the prisoner,--who was an old
quartermaster in the army of the Upper Rhine,--as he sat down upon a
bench and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

"Indeed!" said the tall colonel with the bald head; "before Monsieur
Real, I suppose?"

"Yes, before Real. My poor old general: there he was, as I used to see
him formerly, with his hand on the breast of his uniform, his pale, thin
features as calm as ever, until at last when roused his eyes flashed
fire and his lip trembled before he broke out into such a torrent of
attack--"

"Attack, say you?" interrupted the Abbe,; "a bold course, my faith! in
one who has need of all his powers for defence."

"It was ever his tactique to be the assailant," said a bronzed,
soldierlike fellow, in a patched uniform; "he did so in Holland."

"He chose a better enemy to practise it with then, than he has done
now," resumed the quartermaster, sadly.

"Whom do you mean?" cried half a dozen voices together.

..."The Consul."

"The Consul! Bonaparte! Attack him!" repeated one after the other, in
accents of surprise and horror. "Poor fellow, he is deranged."

"So I almost thought myself, as I heard him," replied the quartermaster;
"for, after submitting with patience to a long and tiresome examination,
he suddenly, as if endurance could go no farther, cried out,--'Assez!'
The prefet started, and Thuriot, who sat beside him, looked up
terrified, while Pichegru went on: 'So the whole of this negotiation
about Cayenne is then a falsehood? Your promise to make me governor
there, if I consented to quit France forever, was a trick to extort
confession or a bribe to silence? Be it so. Now, come what will, I 'll
not leave France; and, more still, I 'll declare everything before the
judges openly at the tribunal. The people shall know, all Europe shall
know, who is my accuser, and what he is. Yes! your Consul himself
treated with the Bourbons in Italy; the negotiations were begun,
continued, carried on, and only broken off by his own excessive demands.
Ay, I can prove it: his very return from Egypt through the whole English
fleet,--that happy chance