"It was at this period that a plot was formed by a league of warmhearted, loyal men,--not only royalists, but republicans, too,--to rescue the dauphin from his long imprisonment and send him somewhere, possibly out of the country, to live out the rest of his life in peace. This league was known as 'The Brotherhood of Liberation,' and the world to-day would stand amazed, did it know the members, the many _famous_ members, who composed it. It has even been whispered that Barras himself and the great Napoleon Bonaparte--then young, poor, and comparatively unknown--were concerned in this plot. All that, however, is as it may be. "But the main thing is this. The brotherhood was accustomed to meet secretly at the house of my grandfather, another Marquis de Fenouil, in Paris, for he was one of the chief leaders and originators of the scheme. Among them was a young fellow scarcely more than five years older than the dauphin, one Jean Mettot, who was deeply and devotedly interested in the plan. It seems that he and his little foster-sister, Yvonne Clouet, had once become acquainted with the dauphin as he played in happier years in his garden of the Tuileries. Through his intervention, the queen, Marie Antoinette herself, had given the young fellow's foster-mother quite a large sum to defray the overdue taxes on her home and thus enable her to keep it for her children. So grateful was this poor washerwoman, Mère Clouet, and her little daughter Yvonne and her foster-son, Jean Mettot, whom she had adopted from the foundling hospital, that they had vowed to help the poor, ill-used dauphin, even to the extent of risking their lives for him. "It was Jean Mettot who played one of the most important roles in the plan to smuggle the dauphin out of the Temple Tower. He was employed in that citadel as cook's assistant, and thus was able to give aid right on the spot, as it were. One of the dauphin's three guardians, Gomin, had also become a member of the brotherhood, else the plan could never have been carried out.