"
"After involving me in this infamous enterprise, do you think that I
have any thanks to give you?"
"When I proposed to you an enterprise which was not exempt from blame
to timid minds," he replied, audaciously, "I had only your own
prosperity in view. As for me, whether I succeed or fail, I can make
all results further my ends. If you marry Montauran, I shall be
delighted to serve the Bourbons in Paris, where I am already a member
of the Clichy club. Now, if circumstances were to put me in
correspondence with the princes I should abandon the interests of the
Republic, which is already on its last legs. General Bonaparte is much
too able a man not to know that he can't be in England and in Italy at
the same time, and that is how the Republic is about to fall. I have
no doubt he made the 18th Brumaire to obtain greater advantages over
the Bourbons when it came to treating with them. He is a long-headed
fellow, and very keen; but the politicians will get the better of him
on their own ground. The betrayal of France is another scruple which
men of superiority leave to fools. I won't conceal from you that I
have come here with the necessary authority to open negotiations with
the Chouans, /or/ to further their destruction, as the case may be;
for Fouche, my patron, is deep; he has always played a double part;
during the Terror he was as much for Robespierre as for Danton--"
"Whom you basely abandoned," she said.
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