had been secretly released, and that a dying patient from the hospital
had been substituted for him. The belief has been kept alive to this
day. The most popular living dramatist[3] has a play now running at
Paris, in which the king is rescued in a washerwoman's linen basket,
which draws crowds. The truth is that he died on June 8, 1795. The
Republic had gained its purpose. Peace was signed with Spain; and the
friends of monarchy on the Constitutional Committee at once declared
that they would not vote for it.

[3] Sardou.

* * * * *

At the very moment when the Constitution was presented to the Assembly
by Boissy d'Anglas, a fleet of transports under convoy appeared off
the western coast. Pitt had allowed La Vendee to go down in defeat and
slaughter, but at last he made up his mind to help, and it was done on
a magnificent scale. Two expeditions were fitted out, and furnished
with material of war. Each of them carried three or four thousand
_emigres_ armed and clad by England. One was commanded by d'Hervilly,
whom we have already seen, for it was he who took the order to cease
firing on August 10; the other by young Sombreuil, whose father was
saved in September in the tragic way you have heard. At the head of
them all was the Count de Puisaye, the most politic and influential
of the _emigres_, a man who had been in touch with the Girondins in
Normandy, who had obtained the ear of ministers at Whitehall, and who
had been washed in so many waters that the genuine, exclusive,
narrow-minded managers of Vendean legitimacy neither understood nor
believed him. They brought a vast treasure in the shape of forged
_assignats_; and in confused memory of the services rendered by the
titular of Agra, they brought a real bishop who had sanctioned the
forgery.

The first division sailed from Cowes on June 10. On the 23rd Lord
Bridport engaged the French fleet and drove it into port. Four days
later the _emigres_ landed at Carnac, among the early monuments of the
Celtic race. It was a low promontory, defended at the neck by a fort
named after the Duke de Penthievre, and it could be swept, in places,
by the guns of the fleet. Thousands of Chouans joined; but La Vendee
was suspicious and stood aloof. They had expected the fleet to come to
them, but it had gone to Brittany, and there was jealousy between the
two provinces, between the partisans of Lewis XVIII. and those of his
brother the Count d