head became turned. The fall of the Empire
put an end to the society he had joined: Lebeau dissolved it. During
the siege Monnier was a sort of leader among the ouvriers; but as it
advanced and famine commenced, he contracted the habit of intoxication.
His children died of cold and hunger. The woman he lived with followed
them to the grave. Then he seems to have become a ferocious madman,
and to have been implicated in the worst crimes of the Communists. He
cherished a wild desire of revenge against this Jean Lebeau, to whom
he attributed all his calamities, and by whom, he said, his brother had
been shot in the sortie of December.

"Here comes the strange part of the story. This Jean Lebeau is alleged
to have been one and the same person with Victor de Mauleon. The Medecin
I have named, and who is well known in Belleville and Montmartre as the
Medecin des Pauvres, confesses that he belonged to the secret society
organised by Lebeau; that the disguise the Vicomte assumed was so
complete, that he should not have recognised his identity with
the conspirator but for an accident. During the latter time of the
bombardment, he, the _Medecin des Pauvres_, was on the eastern ramparts,
and his attention was suddenly called to a man mortally wounded by
the splinter of a shell. While examining the nature of the wound; De
Mauleon, who was also on the ramparts, came to the spot. The dying man
said, 'M. le Vicomte, you owe me a service. My name is Marc le Roux.
I was on the police before the war. When M. de. Mauleon reassumed his
station, and was making himself obnoxious to the Emperor, I might have
denounced him as Jean Lebeau the conspirator. I did not. The siege
has reduced me to want. I have a child at home--a pet. Don't let her
starve.' 'I will see to her,' said the Vicomte. Before we could get the
man into the ambulance cart he expired.

"The Medecin who told this story I had the curiosity to see myself, and
cross-question. I own I believe his statement. Whether De Mauleon did
or did not conspire against a fallen dynasty, to which he owed no
allegiance, can little, if at all, injure the reputation he has left
behind of a very remarkable man--of great courage and great ability--who
might have had a splendid career if he had survived. But, as Savarin
says truly, the first bodies which the car of revolution crushes down
are those which first harness themselves to it.

"Among De Mauleon's papers is the programme of a constitution