The letter was approved by all, folded, sealed, and then given to Coster de Saint-Victor.
At midnight the great portal of the Chartreuse opened to permit two horsemen to pass out. One, the bearer of the letter to Cadoudal, together with the desired sum, took the road to Mâcon. The other, carrying the corpse of Lucien de Fargas, was on his way to the Place de la Prefecture at Bourg.
In the breast of the corpse was the knife with which he had been killed; and attached to the handle by a thread was the letter which the condemned man had written just before his death.
[CHAPTER IX]
THE COMTE DE FARGAS
It is now necessary that our readers should learn who was the unfortunate young man whose body had been placed upon the Place de la Prefecture, and also who the young woman was who had alighted at the Hôtel des Grottes de Ceyzeriat in the same square.
They were the last remaining scions of an old family of Provence. Their father, formerly a colonel and Chevalier de Saint-Louis, was born in the same town as Barras, with whom he had been intimate in his youth; namely, Fos-Emphoux. An uncle who had died at Avignon, making him his heir, had left him a house in that city. Thither he went in 1787, with his children, Lucien and Diane. Lucien at that time was twelve and Diane eight. That was the time of early revolutionary ardor, hopeful or fearful, as one was either a patriot or a royalist.
To those who are acquainted with Avignon, there were then in that city, as there are now and always have been, two cities in one—the Roman city and the French city.