About three days after the publication of Moreau's letter, we were walking as usual in the garden of the Temple, when a huissier came up, and beckoning to two of the prisoners, desired them to follow him. Such was the ordinary course by which one or more were daily summoned before the tribunal for examination, and we took no notice of what had become a matter of every-day occurrence, and went on conversing as before about the news of the morning. Several hours elapsed without the others having returned; and at last we began to feel anxious about their fate, when one of them made his appearance, his heightened color and agitated expression betokening that something more than common had occurred.
“We were examined with Pichegru,” said the prisoner,—who was an old quartermaster in the army of the Upper Rhine,—as he sat down upon a bench and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
“Indeed!” said the tall colonel with the bald head; “before Monsieur Réal, I suppose?”
“Yes, before Réal. My poor old general: there he was, as I used to see him formerly, with his hand on the breast of his uniform, his pale, thin features as calm as ever, until at last when roused his eyes flashed fire and his lip trembled before he broke out into such a torrent of attack—”
“Attack, say you?” interrupted the Abbé,; “a bold course, my faith! in one who has need of all his powers for defence.”
“It was ever his tactique to be the assailant,” said a bronzed, soldierlike fellow, in a patched uniform; “he did so in Holland.”
“He chose a better enemy to practise it with then, than he has done now,” resumed the quartermaster, sadly.
“Whom do you mean?” cried half a dozen voices together.
..."The Consul.”
“The Consul! Bonaparte! Attack him!” repeated one after the other, in accents of surprise and horror. “Poor fellow, he is deranged.”