"Excuse me, Monsieur, excuse me; I took my pen to defend you, but my heart utterly revolted against a system which brought treachery and perfidy in its train. What! son of this same fatherland, have you never had a filial feeling towards it? What! was there no emotion in your heart at the sight of the rocks, the trees, the houses, the neighbourhoods, which were the scene of your sports in childhood? When you came to the world, it carried you on its bosom, it nourished you with its fruits. When you came to years of discretion, it set its hopes upon you, it honoured you with its confidence, it said to you: 'My son, you see the wretched state to which the injustice of men has brought me; collecting my energies in my passionate grief, I once more attain a vigour which promises me sure and infallible restoration; but I am threatened anew; hasten, my son, to Versailles; inform the great king better, dissipate his suspicions, implore his friendship.' "Well, and what then? A little gold made you a betrayer of the trust your country had reposed in you; for the sake of a little gold you were soon seen with the parricidal sword in your hand lacerating its bosom. Ah! Monsieur, I am far from wishing you any harm; but tremble ... there are pangs of conscience that avenge. Your fellow-citizens, who abhor you, will enlighten France as to your true character. The estates and the pensions, the fruit of your treasons, will be taken from you. Bowed down by age and misery, in the horrible solitude of crime, you will live long enough to be tormented by your conscience. The father will point you out to his son, the teacher to his scholar, and say: "Children, learn to honour your country, virtue, fidelity, and humanity.' "And she, whose youth, beauty, and innocence they prostitute—her pure and chaste heart trembles under the touch of a polluted hand? Estimable and unhappy woman!... "Soon the cordons of honour and the pomp of wealth will vanish, and the contempt of mankind will be heaped on you. Will you seek, on the breast of him who is the author of that report, a consolation with which your gentle and loving soul cannot dispense? Will you seek in his eyes tears to mingle with your own? Will your trembling hand, laid upon his heart, try to tell him the emotion of yours? Ah! if you find tears with _him_, they will be tears of remorse. If his heart beats, it will be in the convulsions of the wretch who dies cursing nature, himself, and the hand that leads him.