iastic as in pleasure. La Patrie was his idol, his heaven,
his nightmare; by day he spouted, by night he dreamed, of his country. I
have spoken to you of his coiffure a la Sylla; need I mention his pipe,
his meerschaum pipe, of which General Foy's head was the bowl; his
handkerchief with the Charte printed thereon; and his celebrated
tricolor braces, which kept the rallying sign of his country ever close
to his heart? Besides these outward and visible signs of sedition,
he had inward and secret plans of revolution: he belonged to clubs,
frequented associations, read the Constitutionnel (Liberals, in those
days, swore by the Constitutionnel), harangued peers and deputies who
had deserved well of their country; and if death happened to fall on
such, and the Constitutionnel declared their merit, Harmodius was the
very first to attend their obsequies, or to set his shoulder to their
coffins.

"Such were his tastes and passions: his antipathies were not less
lively. He detested three things: a Jesuit, a gendarme, and a claqueur
at a theatre. At this period, missionaries were rife about Paris, and
endeavored to re-illume the zeal of the faithful by public preachings in
the churches. 'Infames jesuites!' would Harmodius exclaim, who, in the
excess of his toleration, tolerated nothing; and, at the head of a band
of philosophers like himself, would attend with scrupulous exactitude
the meetings of the reverend gentlemen. But, instead of a contrite
heart, Harmodius only brought the abomination of desolation into their
sanctuary. A perpetual fire of fulminating balls would bang from under
the feet of the faithful; odors of impure assafoetida would mingle with
the fumes of the incense; and wicked drinking choruses would rise up
along with the holy canticles, in hideous dissonance, reminding one of
the old orgies under the reign of the Abbot of Unreason.

"His hatred of the gendarmes was equally ferocious: and as for the
claqueurs, woe be to them when Harmodius was in the pit! They knew him,
and trembled before him, like the earth before Alexander; and his
famous war-cry, 'La Carte au chapeau!' was so much dreaded, that the
'entrepreneurs de succes dramatiques' demanded twice as much to do
the Odeon Theatre (which we students and Harmodius frequented), as to
applaud at any other place of amusement: and, indeed, their double pay
was hardly gained; Harmodius taking care that they should earn the most
of it under the benches."

Thi