“Attack, say you?” interrupted the Abbé,; “a bold course, my faith! in one who has need of all his powers for defence.” “It was ever his tactique to be the assailant,” said a bronzed, soldierlike fellow, in a patched uniform; “he did so in Holland.” “He chose a better enemy to practise it with then, than he has done now,” resumed the quartermaster, sadly. “Whom do you mean?” cried half a dozen voices together. ...“The Consul.” “The Consul! Bonaparte! Attack him!” repeated one after the other, in accents of surprise and horror. “Poor fellow, he is deranged.” “So I almost thought myself, as I heard him,” replied the quartermaster; “for, after submitting with patience to a long and tiresome examination, he suddenly, as if endurance could go no farther, cried out,--'Assez!' The préfet started, and Thuriot, who sat beside him, looked up terrified, while Pichegru went on: 'So the whole of this negotiation about Cayenne is then a falsehood? Your promise to make me governor there, if I consented to quit France forever, was a trick to extort confession or a bribe to silence? Be it so. Now, come what will, I 'll not leave France; and, more still, I 'll declare everything before the judges openly at the tribunal. The people shall know, all Europe shall know, who is my accuser, and what he is. Yes! your Consul himself treated with the Bourbons in Italy; the negotiations were begun, continued, carried on, and only broken off by his own excessive demands. Ay, I can prove it: his very return from Egypt through the whole English fleet,--that happy chance, as you were wont to term it,--was a secret treaty with Pitt for the restoration of the exiled family on his reaching Paris. These facts--and facts you shall confess them--are in my power to prove; and prove them I will in the face of all France.'” “Poor Pichegru!” said the abbe, contemptuously. “What an ill-tempered child a great general may be, after all! Did he think the hour would ever come for him to realize such a dream?” “What do you mean?” cried two or three together. “The Corsican never forgets a vendetta,” was the cool reply, as he walked away. “True,” said the colonel, thoughtfully; “quite true.” To me these words were riddles. My only feeling towards Pichegru was one of contempt and pity, that in any depth of misfortune he could resort to such an unworthy attack upon him who still was the idol of all my thoughts; and for this, the conqueror of Holland stood now as low in my esteem as the most vulgar of the rabble gang that each day saw sentenced to the galleys. CHAPTER XXXV. THE REIGN OF TERROR UNDER THE CONSULATE.