e territory of France?"

"The same thing which placed you on that bench--force."

"Are you mad?"

"No--are you?"

"Do you not know that we can send you to the"--

"If you do, I shall only go before _you_."

This put an end to my interrogatory at once. I had accidentally
touched upon the nerve which quivered in every bosom of these fellows.
There was a singular presentiment among even the boldest of the
Revolutionists, that the new order of things would not last, and that,
when the change came, it would be a bloody one. Life had become
sufficiently precarious already among the possessors of power; and the
least intimation of death was actually formidable to a race of
villains whose hands were hourly imbued in slaughter. I had been
hitherto placed in scarcely more than surveillance. An order for my
confinement as a "Brigand Anglais," was made out by the indignant
"commission," and I was transferred from my narrow and lonely cell
into the huge crowded building in the opposite cloister, which had
been the scene of the attack on the previous night. I could, with
Cato, "smile on the drawn dagger and defy its point." I walked out
with the air of a Cato.

This change, intended for my infinite degradation until the guillotine
should have dispatched its business in arrear, I found much to my
advantage. The man who expects nothing, cannot be hurt by
disappointment; and when I was conducted from my solitary cell into
the midst of four or five hundred prisoners, I felt the human feelings
kindle in me, which had been chilled between my four stone walls.

The prisoners with whom I was now to take my chance, were of all
ranks, professions, and degrees of crime. The true crime in the eyes
of the republic being, to be rich. Yet there the culprit had some hope
of being suffered to live, at least while daily examinations, with the
hourly perspective of the axe, could make him contribute to the purses
of the tribunal. Those who happened to be poor, were found guilty of
_incivisme_ at once, and were daily drafted off to the Place de Greve,
from which they never returned. But some of the prisoners were from La
Vendee, peasants mixed with nobles; who, though no formal shape of
resistance to the republic was yet declared, had exhibited enough of
that gallant contempt of the new tyranny, which afterwards
immortalized the name, to render them obnoxious to the ruffians at its
head. It was this sturdy portion which had made the dash on th