“Oh! You seem to think that I play such pranks with my face uncovered? Truly, my dear colonel, you mistake me for some one else. It is well enough to lay aside my mask among friends; but among strangers—no, no! Are not these carnival times? I don’t see why I shouldn’t disguise myself as Abellino or Karl Moor, when Messieurs Gohier, Sieyès, Roger Ducos, Moulin and Barras are masquerading as kings of France.”
“And you entered the city masked?”
“The city, the hotel, the dining-room. It is true that if my face was covered, my belt was not, and, as you see, it is well garnished.”
The young man tossed aside his coat, displaying his belt, which was furnished with four pistols and a short hunting-knife. Then, with a gayety which seemed characteristic of his careless nature, he added: “I ought to look ferocious, oughtn’t I? They may have taken me for the late Mandrin, descending from the mountains of Savoy. By the bye, here are the sixty thousand francs of Her Highness, the Directory.” And the young man disdainfully kicked the valise which he had placed on the ground, which emitted a metallic sound indicating the presence of gold. Then he mingled with the group of friends from whom he had been separated by the natural distance between a narrator and his listeners.
One of the monks stooped and lifted the valise.
“Despise gold as much as you please, my dear Morgan, since that doesn’t prevent you from capturing it. But I know of some brave fellows who are awaiting these sixty thousand francs, you so disdainfully kick aside, with as much impatience and anxiety as a caravan, lost in the desert, awaits the drop of water which is to save it from dying of thirst.”
“Our friends of the Vendée, I suppose?” replied Morgan. “Much good may it do them! Egotists, they are fighting. These gentlemen have chosen the roses and left us the thorns. Come! don’t they receive anything from England?”
“Oh, yes,” said one of the monks, gayly; “at Quiberon they got bullets and grapeshot.”
“I did not say from the English,” retorted Morgan; “I said from England.”
“Not a penny.”