“So I almost thought myself, as I heard him,” replied the quartermaster; “for, after submitting with patience to a long and tiresome examination, he suddenly, as if endurance could go no farther, cried out,—'Assez!' The préfet started, and Thuriot, who sat beside him, looked up terrified, while Pichegru went on: 'So the whole of this negotiation about Cayenne is then a falsehood? Your promise to make me governor there, if I consented to quit France forever, was a trick to extort confession or a bribe to silence? Be it so. Now, come what will, I 'll not leave France; and, more still, I 'll declare everything before the judges openly at the tribunal. The people shall know, all Europe shall know, who is my accuser, and what he is. Yes! your Consul himself treated with the Bourbons in Italy; the negotiations were begun, continued, carried on, and only broken off by his own excessive demands. Ay, I can prove it: his very return from Egypt through the whole English fleet,—that happy chance, as you were wont to term it,—was a secret treaty with Pitt for the restoration of the exiled family on his reaching Paris. These facts—and facts you shall confess them—are in my power to prove; and prove them I will in the face of all France.'”
“Poor Pichegru!” said the abbe, contemptuously. “What an ill-tempered child a great general may be, after all! Did he think the hour would ever come for him to realize such a dream?”
“What do you mean?” cried two or three together.
“The Corsican never forgets a vendetta,” was the cool reply, as he walked away.
“True,” said the colonel, thoughtfully; “quite true.”
To me these words were riddles. My only feeling towards Pichegru was one of contempt and pity, that in any depth of misfortune he could resort to such an unworthy attack upon him who still was the idol of all my thoughts; and for this, the conqueror of Holland stood now as low in my esteem as the most vulgar of the rabble gang that each day saw sentenced to the galleys.
CHAPTER XXXV. THE REIGN OF TERROR UNDER THE CONSULATE.
On the morning that followed the scene I have spoken of came the news of the arrest, the trial, and the death of the Duc d'Enghien. That terrible tragedy—which yet weighs, and will weigh forever, on the memory of the period—reached us in our prison with all the terrible force of circumstances to make it a day of sorrow and mourning. Such details as the journals afforded but little satisfied our curiosity. The youth, the virtues, the bravery of the prince had made him the idol of his party; and while his death was lamented for his own sake, his followers read in it the determination of the Government to stop at nothing in their resolve to exterminate that party. A gloomy silence sat upon the Chouans, who no longer moved about as before, regardless of their confinement to a prison. Their chief remained apart: he neither spoke to any one nor seemed to notice those who passed; he looked stunned and stupefied, rather than deeply affected, and when he lifted his eyes, their expression was cold and wandering. Even the other prisoners, who rarely gave way to feeling of any kind, seemed at first overwhelmed by these sad tidings; and doubtless many who before had trusted to rank and influence for their safety, saw how little dependence could be placed on such aid when the blow had fallen upon a “Condé” himself.
I, who neither knew the political movements of the time nor the sources of the danger the Consul's party anticipated, could only mourn over the unhappy fate of a gallant prince whose daring had cost him his life, and never dreamed for a moment of calling in question the honor or good faith of Bonaparte in an affair of which I could have easily believed him totally ignorant. Such, indeed, was the representation of the “Moniteur;” and whatever doubts the hints about me might have excited, were speedily allayed by the accounts I read of the Consul's indignation at the haste and informality of the trial, and his deep anger at the catastrophe that followed it.