"That is exactly my own opinion," M. de Polignac calmly replied.
After this coincidence of ideas, silence fell between the two travellers, during which time daylight began to lighten the darkness that had enshrouded the first portion of their journey.
Thomas was struck with the sight of the ex-minister's long, easily recognisable profile, sharply defined against the increasing light as the horses' feet rattled on the pavement of a town where the shops were being cheerily opened, and the citizens were leisurely standing in little groups in the square, eager for any fresh news that might be going about. Thomas thought their carriage was the object of some attention. He was, however, obliged to change horses at the hôtel de la poste, which was situated in the square, and, short though their halt was, it might prove quite long enough for the prince to be recognised and for the news to create a sensation throughout the town, with what result it was impossible to calculate. Thomas wore a cap with a broad peak; he threw this over the prince's aristocratic face and wrapped his comforter round his neck. Thomas called this proceeding extinguishing his prisoner. When the inquisitive townsfolk came and looked in at the door of the carriage and saw, by the side of Thomas's round, open, cool face, a bonneted figure shrouded in a neck-wrapper, no suspicion was aroused in their breasts, and the carriage started off with fresh horses at a tearing pace. This manœuvre was repeated at nearly every place of relay. When Thomas related these incidents, it was with a certain degree of melancholy. He did not forget that prison, and perhaps even death, awaited his travelling-companion at their journey's end, he who on more than one occasion, indeed, was to confront in a court of justice the alternative of death or imprisonment.
On 28 August, the three prisoners from Tours and the one from Saint-Lo reached Paris almost simultaneously. They were all four shut up in that portion of the château of Vincennes that was called the Queen's pavilion (pavillon de la Reine). Three of them were new men. Indeed, they were scarcely known to anybody before the fatal day of misfortune that overtook them. They had gained their notoriety, or, rather, their unpopularity, by the printing of a hundred thousand copies of Barthélemy's and Méry's verses, and by the oral skits recited against M. de Peyronnet in particular, by the celebrated Chodruc-Duclos. We shall have occasion, later, to speak of this modern Diogenes (we allude, of course, to Chodruc-Duclos and not M. de Peyronnet), who, for seven or eight years, troubled the galleries of the Palais-Royal, where, at all hours of the day, he displayed his unbuttoned coat, his hardly decent trousers, his waistcoat fastened together with string, his sandal-shoes, his battered old hat and the thick growth which covered the lower half of his face, which had earned him the nickname of the man with the long heard. Then, as we have said, apart from these verses of Barthélemy's and Méry's, and the Bordelaisian legends made up by Chodruc-Duclos, MM. de Chantelauze, Guernon-Ranville and de Peyronnet were almost unknown. It was very different in the case of M. de Polignac: apart from the claim of his family that they had descended from the same stock as Sidoine Apollinaire, the Polignacs are of historic celebrity.
In the first place, they were old conspirators: Cardinal Melchior de Polignac, the author of l'Anti-Lucrèce, had plotted against the regent at the beginning of the previous century; Prince Jules de Polignac had conspired against Napoleon in the beginning of the present one; and their women had played their part during the French Revolution: the Comtesse Diane and the Duchesse Jules, those two inseparable friends of the queen, will both be remembered; the Duchesse Jules in particular, to whom Marie-Antoinette gave a layette of a hundred thousand crowns and a duchy worth a million and a half.
Comte Jules de Polignac, the promoter of the Ordinances, was her second son: he was made prince in 1817 or 1818, by Pius VII., a prince of Rome, of course.
Having emigrated in 1789, he had returned to France in 1804, together with his eldest brother, Armand, on purpose to take part in the conspiracy of Cadoudal and Pichegru; he was about to be condemned, or was, I believe, even condemned, to death, but the persistent intercession of Josephine saved his life.
All these facts went to magnify the importance of the prisoner, whose trial was soon to take place. After an exile of twenty-six years, including imprisonment, ambassadorship, peer-age and ministry, he returned in 1830, under the incubus of a second fatal accusation, to the same dungeon at Vincennes where he had been incarcerated for the same cause of Monarchism in 1804. The order had been issued for the transference of the prisoners from the pavillon de la Reine to the dungeons. M. de Polignac was the first to leave it.
I have seen him several times at the house of Madame du Cayla: he was an extremely fine-looking man, with his white hair and lordly bearing, his haughty manners and a pre-eminent air of distinction. But it should be admitted that none of these qualities impressed the people very much: they are often a reason for condemning a person: in the first Revolution, a fine skin and beautiful linen were quite sufficient grounds for sending a man to execution.