"What can you expect?" asked a man with straight hair, hollow temples, livid skin, and a crooked mouth; a man who was ugly with the twofold ugliness of man and beast. "I kept telling them at the Convention, 'As long as you do not have an organized police and a minister of police--one who is not only appointed to the office but fitted for it--things will go to the devil.' Well, I who have a dozen fellows under me for the pleasure of it--I who am an amateur policeman because I like the business--I am better informed than they." "And what do you know, Monsieur Fouché?" asked Madame de Staël. "Faith, madame, I know that the Chouans have been convoked from all parts of the kingdom, and that the day before yesterday, at Lemaistre's house--you know Lemaistre, baroness?" "Is he not the agent of the princes?" "That's the man. Well, the Jura and the Morbihan shook hands there." "Which means--?" asked Barbé-Marbois. "Which means that Cadoudal renewed his vow of fidelity, and the Count de Sainte-Hermine his oath of vengeance." The other salons had diverged toward the first one, and were gathering around the new-comers who brought the news which we have already heard. "We know who Cadoudal is," replied Madame de Staël. "He is a Chouan, who, after fighting in the Vendée, has crossed the Loire; but who is this Comte de Sainte-Hermine?" "The Comte de Sainte-Hermine is a young noble who belongs to one of the best families of the Jura. He is the second of three sons. His father was guillotined, his mother died of grief, his brother was shot at Auenheim, and he has sworn to avenge his father and his brother. The mysterious president of the Section Le Peletier, the famous Morgan who insulted the Convention in its own hall of assembly, do you know who he is?" "No." "Well, he is the man." "Really, Monsieur Fouché," said Benjamin Constant, "you have missed your vocation. You ought to be neither priest, sailor, deputy, nor representative; you should be minister of police." "And if I were," replied Fouché, "Paris would be quieter than it is now. I ask you, is it not perfectly absurd to quail before the Sections? Menou ought to be shot." "Citizen," said Madame Krüdener, who affected republican forms of speech, "here is citizen Garat; he has just come in, and perhaps he can give us some news. Garat, what do you know?" And she drew into the circle a man of thirty-three or four, elegantly dressed. "He knows that one minim is worth two crotchets," said Benjamin Constant, mockingly.