France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Fiction; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821 -- Fiction
Our readers will hardly know to-day who Fréron was. The Fréron who was
Voltaire’s assailant was better known than he who was the patron of
these elegant assassins; one was the son of the other. Louis Stanislas
was son of Elie-Catherine. The father died of rage when Miromesnil,
Keeper of the Seals, suppressed his journal. The other, irritated by
the injustices of which his father had been the victim, had at first
ardently embraced the revolutionary doctrines. Instead of the “Année
Littéraire,” strangled to death in 1775, he created the “Orateur du
Peuple,” in 1789. He was sent to the Midi on a special mission, and
Marseilles and Toulon retain to this day the memory of his cruelty.
But all was forgotten when, on the 9th Thermidor, he proclaimed himself
against Robespierre, and assisted in casting from the altar the Supreme
Being, the colossus who, being an apostle, had made himself a god.
Fréron, repudiated by the Mountain, which abandoned him to the heavy
jaws of Moise Bayle; Fréron, disdainfully repulsed by the Girondins,
who delivered him over to the imprecations of Isnard; Fréron, as the
terrible and picturesque orator of the Var said, “Fréron naked and
covered with the leprosy of crime,” was accepted, caressed and petted by
the Thermidorians. From them he passed into the camp of the royalists,
and without any reason whatever for obtaining that fatal honor, found
himself suddenly at the head of a powerful party of youth, energy and
vengeance, standing between the passions of the day, which led to all,
and the impotence of the law, which permitted all.
It was to the midst of this _jeunesse_ Fréron, mouthing its words,
slurring its r’s, giving its “word of honor” about everything, that
Morgan now made his way.
It must be admitted that this _jeunesse_, in spite of the clothes it
wore, in spite of the memories these clothes evoked, was wildly gay.
This seems incomprehensible, but it is true. Explain if you can that
Dance of Death at the beginning of the fifteenth century, which, with
all the fury of a modern galop, led by Musard, whirled its chain through
the very Cemetery of the Innocents, and left amid its tombs fifty
thousand of its votaries.
Morgan was evidently seeking some one.
A young dandy, who was dipping into the silver-gilt comfit-box of
a charming victim, with an ensanguined finger, the only part of his
delicate hand that had escaped the almond paste, tried to stop him, to
relate the particulars of the expedition from which he had brought back
this bloody trophy. But Morgan smiled, pressed his other hand which
was gloved, and contented himself with replying: “I am looking for some
one.”
“Important?”
“Company of Jehu.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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