France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Fiction; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821 -- Fiction
Leprêtre was forty-eight years old. He was formerly a captain of
dragoons, a knight of St. Louis, of a noble countenance, prepossessing
carriage and much elegance of manner. Guyon and Amiet have never been
known by their real names. They owe that to the accommodating spirit
prevailing among the vendors of passports of those days. Let the reader
picture to himself two dare-devils between twenty and thirty years of
age, allied by some common responsibility, the sequence, perhaps of
some misdeed, or, by a more delicate and generous interest, the fear of
compromising their family name. Then you will know of Guyon and Amiet
all that I can recall. The latter had a sinister countenance, to which,
perhaps, he owes the bad reputation with which all his biographers have
credited him. Hyvert was the son of a rich merchant of Lyons, who had
offered the sub-officer charged with his deportation sixty thousand
francs to permit his escape. He was at once the Achilles and the Paris
of the band. He was of medium height but well formed, lithe, and of
graceful and pleasing address. His eyes were never without animation nor
his lips without a smile. His was one of those countenances which
are never forgotten, and which present an inexpressible blending of
sweetness and strength, tenderness and energy. When he yielded to the
eloquent petulance of his inspirations he soared to enthusiasm. His
conversation revealed the rudiments of an excellent early education and
much natural intelligence. That which was so terrifying in him was his
tone of heedless gayety, which contrasted so horribly with his position.
For the rest, he was unanimously conceded to be kind, generous, humane,
lenient toward the weak, while with the strong he loved to display a
vigor truly athletic which his somewhat effeminate features were far
from indicating. He boasted that he had never been without money, and
had no enemies. That was his sole reply to the charges of theft and
assassination. He was twenty-two years old.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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