"Ah! is it you, Barbé-Marbois," said Madame de Staël, addressing a man in the forties, very handsome, but with the pomposity and vapidity which is so often met with in palaces and among diplomats—a very honest man for all that, and the son-in-law of William Moore, the president and governor of Pennsylvania. "Where do you come from?"
"Straight from the Convention."
"And what are they doing there?"
"Arguing. They have outlawed the Sectionists and are arming the patriots. As for the Sectionists, they have already found the bells, which proves that they are monarchists in disguise. To-morrow they will find their guns, and then there will be a fine rumpus."
"What can you expect?" asked a man with straight hair, hollow temples, livid skin, and a crooked mouth; a man who was ugly with the twofold ugliness of man and beast. "I kept telling them at the Convention, 'As long as you do not have an organized police and a minister of police—one who is not only appointed to the office but fitted for it—things will go to the devil.' Well, I who have a dozen fellows under me for the pleasure of it—I who am an amateur policeman because I like the business—I am better informed than they."
"And what do you know, Monsieur Fouché?" asked Madame de Staël.
"Faith, madame, I know that the Chouans have been convoked from all parts of the kingdom, and that the day before yesterday, at Lemaistre's house—you know Lemaistre, baroness?"
"Is he not the agent of the princes?"
"That's the man. Well, the Jura and the Morbihan shook hands there."