“Forgive my tone,” he writes. “I apologize a thousand times for being such a worry to you, but I can’t help it in regard to so important a matter, calling for so much energy and hurry. You have voluntarily abandoned the position ensured you by your sex and great advantages in order to play the _rôle_ of a great and high-minded statesman. There are discomforts and disadvantages attached to this new estate, and it is my misfortune to have to bring this home to you. I can but console myself with the thought of your goodness and of the great cause which we have embraced and which is the subject of all our anxieties. May God prosper it, and may it bring you glory and me happiness!” In the mouth of any one but Cormier these protestations would arouse one’s distrust; but what we already know of him, and what we are to learn presently of his later conduct, serve to reassure us in regard to him. In spite of all his good will, however, Cormier is constantly being interrupted in his work. Now it is the health of his son, Achille, which disquiets him, now he is a prey to terrible attacks of gout which will give him no rest. “I have been bent double for two nights and a day,” he writes to his friend on September 1, 1794, “without being able to change my position. It takes four persons to move this great body of mine. I am a little more free from pain at present, and I take up my pen at the earliest possible moment to send you this explanation of my silence.” It is at this moment that Louis de Frotté, who has been a little in the background, comes again to the front of the stage. Since his arrival in London, the young officer, without neglecting the society of the Royalist Committee, has been spending most of his time in the offices of the English Government, endeavouring to impress upon Windham “the desirability of carrying out his ideas, and the ease with which they may be brought to fruit, as he has made up his mind to devote himself to them.” One project he has specially at heart, that of receiving some kind of official mission from the Government which will enable him to land in Normandy with adequate powers and to give new life there to the Royalist insurrection. Should he succeed, the help he “would thus obtain would lead to the execution of our cherished plans,” he writes to Lady Atkyns, and she will reap at last “all the honour that will be due to the generous sacrifices that she has made.”