FORE:Sheridan took the matter up, the postillions were examined, but all they said was that a strange gentleman had taken them to a public-house and bribed them to take the road they had followed. The hired servant had disappeared. Not wishing to spend the time or money necessary to bring this mysterious affair into a law court, they did nothing more about it, and never understood why it had happened, or what was intended, or anything concerning it.Monsieur has forgotten to tell me his name.
Suddenly a shrill voice was heard from the altar, [178] saying, Mme. la Marchale, you will not have the eighteen hundred thousand francs that you ask for your husband, he has already one hundred thousand cus de rente, and that is enough; he is already Duke, Peer, Grandee of Spain, and Marshal of France; he has already the orders of the Saint-Esprit and the Golden Fleece; your family is loaded with the favours of the court; if you are not content it is because it is impossible to satisfy you; and I advise you to renounce becoming a princess of the Empire. Your husband will not have the garter of St. George either.Madame, have you not brought any other dress?I must go back to my house. An emigr is [468] hidden there. I alone know the secret of his hiding-place; if I do not let him out he will be starved to death.Between him and the royalists were the September massacres, rivers of blood, crimes and blasphemies without end.Among the numbers of men who made love to her more or less seriously, two were especially conspicuous, [271] the Prince de Listenay and the Marquis de Fontenay.Never in the worlds history was a stranger mingling of generosity and folly, unpractical learning [212] and brutal ignorance, misguided talents and well-meaning stupidity, saintly goodness and diabolical wickedness, heroic deeds and horrible crimes, than in the years ushered in with such triumph and joy by the credulous persons so truly described in later years by Napoleon: Political economists are nothing but visionaries who dream of plans of finance when they are not fit to be schoolmasters in the smallest village.... Your speculators trace their Utopian schemes upon paper, fools read and believe them, every one babbles about universal happiness, and presently the people have not bread to eat. Then comes a revolution.... Necker was the cause of the saturnalia that devastated France. It was he who overturned the monarchy, and brought Louis XVI. to the scaffold.... Robespierre himself, Danton, and Marat have done less mischief to France than M. Necker. It was he who brought about the Revolution.
