Pichegru, whatever his occupation, always read these letters as soon as he received them, and put them away in his portfolio carefully, saying: "Poor dear girl, I myself taught her how to spell."
We crave permission to enlarge upon these details. We are about to bring actively upon the stage men who, for a long time, have been more or less prominently before the eyes of Europe, who have been praised or blamed as the different parties wished to elevate or abase them. Historians themselves have judged these men more or less superficially, thanks to their habit of accepting ready-made opinions; but it is different with the novelist, constrained as he is to descend to the veriest details, since in the most insignificant he may sometimes find the thread that will guide him through the most inextricable labyrinth—that of the human heart. We therefore dare to affirm that in showing them in their private life, which historians altogether neglect to do, as well as in their public life, to which too much attention is often paid, although it is sometimes but the mask of the other, we shall bring these illustrious dead before the reader's eyes, for the first time as they really were—these dead whom political passions have cast into the hands of calumny to be buried and forgotten.
Thus history tells us that Pichegru betrayed France, for the sake of the government of Alsace, the red ribbon, the Château of Chambord, its park, and its dependencies, together with twelve pieces of cannon, a million, in ready money, two thousand francs of income, half of which was revertible at his death to his wife, and five thousand to each of his children; and finally the territory of Arbois, which was to bear the title of Pichegru, and was to be exempt from taxes for ten years.
The material reply to this accusation is that, as Pichegru was never married, he had neither wife nor children to provide for; the moral reply is, to show him in his private life that we may know what his needs and ambitions really were.
Rose, as we have seen, gave two pieces of advice to her lover: One was to practice economy for his parents' sake, and the other was to remain the same good and simple Charlot that he had always been.
Pichegru received during the campaign a daily sum of one hundred and fifty thousand francs in paper money. The sum for the whole month arrived on the 1st in great sheets divided off. Every morning enough was cut off for the needs of the day, and the sheet was laid upon a table with a pair of scissors upon it. Any one who wished had access to it, and the result was that the sheet rarely lasted the whole month. When it was gone, on the 24th or 25th, as frequently happened, every one had to get along as best he could for the remainder of the time.
One of his secretaries wrote of him: "The great mathematician of Brienne was incapable of calculating in ready money the account of his washerwoman." And he added: "An empire would have been too small for his genius; a farm was too great for his indolence."
As for Rose's advice to remain "the same good Charlot," we shall see whether he needed the advice.
Two or three years after the time of which we are writing, Pichegru, then at the height of his popularity, on his return to his beloved Franche-Comté, to revisit his natal town of Planche, was stopped at the entrance of Arbois, beneath a triumphal arch, by a deputation which came to compliment him and to invite him to a state dinner and a grand ball.
Pichegru listened smilingly to the orator, and when he had finished, said: