This group seemed to have as leaders two strange-looking individuals. One of these creatures, whose name was Verriéres, was a fantastic-looking hunchback. He had not been seen since the 5th and 6th of October, when he had made himself conspicuous at Versailles. He reappeared, however, on the night before our present date.
The other was from the department of Auvergne, and called Fournier, the American, because he had been overseer of a negro plantation in St. Domingo.
He held in his hand a firelock.
The miserable creatures who were listening to the harangue of these two men were a sort of human larva, arising none knew from where.
On entering the Champ de Mars we threw a glance around, to see if we could recognise, in the midst of these three or four hundred strollers, the four persons we came in search of. At that moment, it was all the easier to do so, as every one was following Lanterre to the altar of the country. We followed as the rest. Lanterre announced to the patriots, with a voice which suited admirably these sort of proceedings, that the petition placed there the preceding night could not be signed, as, at the moment this petition was written, it was supposed that the Assembly had not yet decided the fate of the King, but that, since then, they had recognised his innocence and inviolability in the sitting of the night before. The Jacobins, he continued, intended occupying themselves with the forming a new petition, which they would, ere long, present for signature.
This declaration was received with murmurs.
“Why should we await the presentation of a petition already formed? Don’t we know, as well as Messieurs Brissot, Laclos, and Robespierre, what we want?” said an enormous man, of about forty years of age, a young and beautiful woman leaning on his arm. “We can also write,” added he, with a smile; “and I might even say that we commence to think.”
“No one hinders you. Citizen Robert,” said Lanterre, who was, probably, not annoyed at the interruption. “You, and, above all, the Citizen Keralio, whose dear little arm you have the extreme felicity of squeezing within your own, are more capable of success than any one else. In the meantime, I take possession of the one made by the Society.”
So saying, Lanterre placed in his pocket the petition written by me, dictated by Brissot, amended by Laclos, and definitely corrected by Bonneville and Camille Desmoulins.
“With all this, I neither see my wife nor my daughters,” exclaimed M. Duplay.