"My friend, it is time that I should be presented to the chiefs of your
party!"

"Chiefs, par tous les diables!" growled the other; "we Chouans are all
chiefs, when it comes to blows. You have seen my credentials; you know
that I am a man to be trusted: what more do you need?"

"For myself nothing; but my friends are more scrupulous. I have sounded,
as I promised, the heads of the old Jacobin party, and they are
favourable. This upstart soldier, who has suddenly seized in his iron
grasp all the fruits of the Revolution, is as hateful to them as to you.
But que voulez vous, mon cher? men are men! It is one thing to destroy
Bonaparte; it is another thing to restore the Bourbons. How can the
Jacobin chiefs depend on your assurance, or my own, that the Bourbons
will forget the old offences and reward the new service? You apprise me-
-so do your credentials--that a prince of the blood is engaged in this
enterprise, that he will appear at the proper season. Put me in direct
communication with this representative of the Bourbons, and I promise in
return, if his assurances are satisfactory, that you shall have an
emeute, to be felt from Paris to Marseilles. If you cannot do this, I am
useless; and I withdraw--"

"Withdraw! Garde a vous, Monsieur le Savant! No man withdraws alive
from a conspiracy like ours."

We have said before that Olivier Dalibard was not physically brave; and
the look of the Chouan, as those words were said, would have frozen the
blood of many a bolder man. But the habitual hypocrisy of Dalibard
enabled him to disguise his fear, and he replied dryly,--