is.
Fouche, through the medium of his agents, had given Pichegru, Georges,
and some other partisans of royalty, to understand that they might depend
on Moreau, who, it was said, was quite prepared. It is certain that
Moreau informed Pichegru that he (Pichegru) had been deceived, and that
he had never been spoken to on the subject. Russillon declared on the
trial that on the 14th of March the Polignacs said to some one,
"Everything is going wrong--they do not understand each other. Moreau
does not keep his word. We have been deceived." M. de Riviera declared
that he soon became convinced they had been deceived, and was about to
return to England when he was arrested. It is certain that the principal
conspirators obtained positive information which confirmed their
suspicions. They learned Moreau's declaration from Pichegru. Many of
the accused declared that they soon discovered they had been deceived;
and the greater part of them were about to quit Paris, when they were all
arrested, almost at one and the same moment. Georges was going into La
Vendee when he was betrayed by the man who, with the connivance of the
police, had escorted him ever since his departure from London, and who
had protected him from any interruption on the part of the police so long
as it was only necessary to know where he was, or what he was about.
Georges had been in Paris seven months before it was considered that the
proper moment had arrived for arresting him.
The almost simultaneous arrest of the conspirators proves clearly that
the police knew perfectly well where they could lay their hands upon
them.
When Pichegru was required to sign his examination he refused. He said
it was unnecessary; that, knowing all the secret machinery of the police,
he suspected that by some chemical process they would erase all the
writing except the signature, and afterwards fill up the paper with
statements which he had never made. His refusal to sign the
interrogatory, he added, would not prevent him from repeating before a
court of justice the truth which he had stated in answer to the questions
proposed to him. Fear was entertained of the disclosures he might make
respecting his connection with Moreau, whose destruction was sought for,
and also with respect to the means employed by the agents of Fouche to
urge the conspirators to effect a change which they desired.
On the evening of the 15th of February I heard of Moreau's arrest, and
early next morn
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