‘Ay, Lajolais, but who would pardon us?’ cried Fouché, carried beyond all the bounds of his prudence by the thought of a danger so imminent. ‘Well, well, let us come back; the price—will that do?’ And taking up a pen he scratched some figures on a piece of paper.
Lajolais smiled dubiously, and added a unit to the left of the sum.
‘What! a hundred and fifty thousand francs!’ cried Fouché.
‘And a cheap bargain, too,’ said the other; ‘for, after all, it is only the price of a ticket in the lottery, of which the great prize is General Ney!’
‘You say truly,’ said the Minister; ‘be it so.’
‘Write your name there, then,’ said Lajolais, ‘beneath those figures; that will be warranty sufficient for my negotiation, and leave the rest to me.’
‘Nature evidently meant you for a chef de police, Master Lajolais.’
‘Or a cardinal, Monsieur le Ministre,’ said the other, as he folded up the paper—a little insignificant slip, scrawled over with a few figures and an almost illegible word, and yet pregnant with infamy to one, banishment to another, ruin and insanity to a third.
This sad record need not be carried further. It is far from a pleasant task to tell of baseness unredeemed by one trait of virtue—of treachery, unrepented even by regret. History records Moreau’s unhappy destiny; the pages of private memoir tell of Ney’s disastrous connection; our own humble reminiscences speak of poor Mahon’s fate, the least known of all, but the most sorrowful victim of a woman’s treachery!