We shall see in what fashion, child though I was, I was to be mixed up in this great affair, a matter of life and death.
[CHAPTER IV]
General Exelmans—His trial—The two brothers Lallemand—Their conspiracy—They are arrested and led through Villers-Cotterets—The affronts to which they were subjected.
May we be permitted to go back a little further, since our dramatic training has accustomed us always and in every detail to prefer the clearest and most lucid style of presentation?
We know what spirit of reaction had been abroad under the government of Louis XVIII., and what persecution during the first restoration the men who had served under the usurper (as Napoleon was called) had had to undergo.
The indiscretion of a few prominent people in the party called the ultra-Royalists had revealed the intentions of the monarchy; one of these designs, they said, was to exterminate the Bonapartists, as the Protestants had been exterminated under Charles IX.
The more absurd the rumours were, the more readily were they believed: the Bourbons were thought capable of the most outrageous projects. And there was—I will not say a great fright among those who were menaced (the old comrades of the emperor were not so easily alarmed)—but many rumours were abroad. Many left Paris, hoping to rouse less hatred by going far from that everlasting seething pot of intrigues; others rallied together, armed themselves, and resolved to sell their lives dearly. The Government grew uneasy at these gatherings, wished to dissolve them, and, in order to attain this end, forbade all general officers to remain at Paris without leave; ordering all those who were not natives of the capital to return instantly to their own parts.