"By all the saints! Jean, I should never know you! You have grown a foot at least! But this is a singular meeting! Yes, I am back in Paris," said Bonaparte. "I arrived to-day. Perhaps you wonder at finding me in the Brotherhood meeting, but I will tell you how it happened.
"You must know that at present I am a friend and protégé of Barras, who, by the way, was the leader to-night. Barras was a commissioner of the Convention at Marseilles while I was there, and he used his influence to better the condition of my family. So of course I feel somewhat in his debt, though I partially helped to pay that off by the advice and assistance I gave at the siege of Toulon. But be that as it may, I have decided to attach myself to him. He is the man of the hour, and I must attach myself to something!
"Well, recently I received an appointment to come to Paris and command a brigade of infantry that is soon to stamp out the insurrection in La Vendée, but, though I came to Paris, I have refused the command. I have no taste for such butcher's work, and I consider it rather an insult to be given the infantry when I have always been with the artillery. Besides that my health is not good at present.
"So I went to Barras to-day, to acquaint him with these matters. He invited me to sup with him, and then later asked me if I seriously wished to render him a great assistance. Naturally, as I still feel much under obligation to him, I replied that I certainly did so wish. He then told me that he relied on me as a man of honour not to reveal what I should hear if he took me to the meeting of a secret society. As he was leader for the evening, it would not be required that I become a sworn member as yet, and so I went—and met you! Privately I am glad enough to help that poor child to escape, for I think his inhuman detention has been one of the greatest outrages in history. But now tell me how it has fared with you since last we met?" Then Jean gave an account of the intervening year and a half. When he had ended, Bonaparte remarked:
"My boy, what you tell me makes me regard you more highly than ever, and I am not surprised to find you taking so prominent a part in this scheme. In fact I should have expected it. But let me whisper to you a few surmises that have occurred to me to-night. It was a curious meeting, that!—and I amused myself by striving to divine the true motives of many of the leading characters.
"De Batz and other royalists there have of course but one hope,—to get Louis XVII out of the clutches of the Republic, no matter how, and then some day bring him back a victorious king. Then there are not a few staunch Republicans like Barelle, Meunier and Debièrne, who seem actuated only by the humane wish to rescue the little fellow from his cruel captivity.
"But one man there has a motive entirely different, and he is the head and front of it all. That man is Barras! Shall I tell you what is his motive? I have guessed it, though of course he never suspects. He sees in himself the coming man of power. True, he is powerful already, but he aims at higher things. He would rescue Louis XVII and remove him to some distant spot where he can find him if necessary. Later he will use him to dangle over the heads of the royalists as a bait, and over the Republicans as a threat, so balancing his influence with both parties. And at last, at some expedient moment, Louis XVII will disappear forever, and Barras can make himself anything he wishes,—Dictator, Emperor, what not! It is a clever scheme!" Jean shook his head.
"I care not what the ultimate scheme of Barras may be," he vouchsafed, "if only the little fellow can get out of that horrible place! And if I can assist any, I shall only feel that I have done my duty by him and his dead mother!" So the two talked far into the night, and dawn was breaking when Jean went back to the Temple.
But how fared it in the room in the Tower, where a delirious little stranger masqueraded all unconsciously as Louis XVII of France?
For several days before the exchange was effected, Gomin had been writing daily in the Temple register, "Little Capet is ill!" This was quite true, as Louis Charles had been suffering with a severe cold. As Gomin expected, no attention was paid to this report. On the day after the strange child was placed in his care, he wrote, "Little Capet is dangerously ill!" Still no one took any notice of it, and then Lasne, the new keeper arrived. Taking one look at the inert, stricken boy, he exclaimed: