ou
be'st not a coffin-maker----' A roar of merriment cut short his speech,
in which I myself could not but join heartily.

'That is, I know,' said I, 'a thriving business; but mine is even
better; and, not to mystify you longer, I 'll just tell you what I am;
which is, simply, a friend of the Citizen Robespierre.'

The blow told with full force; and I saw, in the terrified looks that
were interchanged around the table, that my sojourn amongst them,
whether destined to be of short or long duration, would not be disturbed
by further liberties. It was truly a reign of terror that same period!
The great agent of everything was the vague and shadowy dread of some
terrible vengeance, against which precautions were all in vain. Men met
each other with secret misgivings, and parted with the same dreadful
distrust. The ties of kindred were all broken; brotherly affection
died out. Existence was become like the struggle for life upon some
shipwrecked raft, where each sought safety by his neighbour's doom! At
such a time--with such terrible teachings--children became men in
all the sterner features of character; cruelty is a lesson so easily
learned.

As for myself, energetic and ambitious by nature, the ascendency my
first assumption of power suggested was too grateful a passion to be
relinquished. The name--whose spell was like a talisman, because now the
secret engine by which I determined to work out my fortune--Robespierre
had become to my imagination like the slave of Aladdin's lamp; and
to conjure him up was to be all-powerful Even to Boivin himself this
influence extended; and it was easy to perceive that he regarded the
whole narrative of the pocket-book as a mere fable, invented to obtain a
position as a spy over his household.

I was not unwilling to encourage the belief--it added to my importance,
by increasing the fear I inspired; and thus I walked indolently about,
giving myself those airs of _mouchard_ that I deemed most fitting, and
taking a mischievous delight in the terror I was inspiring.

The indolence of my life, however, soon wearied me, and I began to long
for some occupation, or some pursuit. Teeming with excitement as the
world was--every day, every hour, brimful of events--it was impossible
to sit calmly on the shore, and watch the great, foaming current of
human passions, without longing to be in the stream. Had I been a man
at that time, I should have become a furious orator of the Mountain--an
im