"By all the saints! Jean, I should never know you! You have grown a foot at least! But this is a singular meeting! Yes, I am back in Paris," said Bonaparte. "I arrived to-day. Perhaps you wonder at finding me in the Brotherhood meeting, but I will tell you how it happened. "You must know that at present I am a friend and protégé of Barras, who, by the way, was the leader to-night. Barras was a commissioner of the Convention at Marseilles while I was there, and he used his influence to better the condition of my family. So of course I feel somewhat in his debt, though I partially helped to pay that off by the advice and assistance I gave at the siege of Toulon. But be that as it may, I have decided to attach myself to him. He is the man of the hour, and I must attach myself to _something_! "Well, recently I received an appointment to come to Paris and command a brigade of infantry that is soon to stamp out the insurrection in La Vendée, but, though I came to Paris, I have refused the command. I have no taste for such butcher's work, and I consider it rather an insult to be given the infantry when I have always been with the artillery. Besides that my health is not good at present. "So I went to Barras to-day, to acquaint him with these matters. He invited me to sup with him, and then later asked me if I seriously wished to render him a great assistance. Naturally, as I still feel much under obligation to him, I replied that I certainly did so wish. He then told me that he relied on me as a man of honour not to reveal what I should hear if he took me to the meeting of a secret society. As he was leader for the evening, it would not be required that I become a sworn member as yet, and so I went--and met you! Privately I am glad enough to help that poor child to escape, for I think his inhuman detention has been one of the greatest outrages in history. But now tell me how it has fared with you since last we met?" Then Jean gave an account of the intervening year and a half. When he had ended, Bonaparte remarked: "My boy, what you tell me makes me regard you more highly than ever, and I am not surprised to find you taking so prominent a part in this scheme. In fact I should have expected it. But let me whisper to you a few surmises that have occurred to me to-night. It was a curious meeting, that!--and I amused myself by striving to divine the true motives of many of the leading characters. "De Batz and other royalists there have of course but one hope,--to get Louis XVII out of the clutches of the Republic, no matter how, and then some day bring him back a victorious king. Then there are not a few staunch Republicans like Barelle, Meunier and Debièrne, who seem actuated only by the humane wish to rescue the little fellow from his cruel captivity.