ngs, and in his delirium he spoke.

This attempted suicide, to tell the truth, was only half believed in,
and many people, having heard of the things that were done in the Temple
and the Prefecture, believed that Bouvet had been assisted in his
strangling, just as they had put Picot's feet to the fire. What gave
colour to these suspicions was the fact that Bouvet's hands "were
horribly swollen" when he appeared before Real the next day, and also
the strange form of the declaration which he was reputed to have
dictated at midnight, just as he was restored to life. "A man who comes
from the gates of the tomb, still covered with the shadows of death,
demands vengeance on those who, by their perfidy," etc. Many were agreed
in thinking that that was not the style of a suicide, with the
death-rattle still in his throat, but that Real's agents must have lent
their eloquence to this half-dead creature.

However it may have been, the government now knew enough to order the
most rigorous measures to be taken against the "last royalists." Bouvet
had, like Picot, only been able to mention the house at Chaillot, and
the lodging in the Rue Careme-Prenant, and Georges' retreat was still
undiscovered. The revelations that fear or torture had drawn from his
associates only served to make the figure of this extraordinary man loom
greater, by showing the power of his ascendancy over his companions, and
the mystery that surrounded all his actions. A legend grew around his
name, and the communications published by _Le Moniteur_, contributed not
a little towards making him a sort of fantastic personage, whom one
expected to see arise suddenly, and by one grand theatrical stroke put
an end to the Revolution.

Paris lived in a fever of excitement during the first days of March,
1804, anxiously following this duel to the death, between the First
Consul and this phantom-man who, shut up in the town and constantly seen
about, still remained uncaught. The barriers were closed as in the
darkest days of the Terror. Patrols, detectives and gendarmes held all
the streets; the soldiers of the garrison had departed, with loaded
arms, to the boulevards outside the walls. White placards announced that
"Those who concealed the brigands would be classed with the brigands
themselves"; the penalty of death attached to any one who should shelter
one of them, even for twenty-four hours, without denouncing him to the
police. The description of Georges and his