d inspired by
an ardent desire to acquire wealth for the sake of Dolores, he rendered
them important services on more than one occasion by lending his obscure
and modest name to conceal operations in which a well-known personage
could not have embarked without peril.

Coursegol was only a peasant; but he had served in the army a long time,
and contact with others had sharpened his wits, while the excellent
judgment of his old master, the Marquis de Chamondrin, had not failed to
exert a most beneficial effect upon his intellectual development. Hence,
though it was not without hesitation that he entered upon a career so
entirely new to him, he at least brought with him not only honesty,
prudence and tact, but a coolness which could not but contribute notably
to his success in those perturbed times.

On the evening to which we have alluded he went to the Palais Egalite as
usual. It was after nightfall, and the restaurants were filled to
overflowing with crowds of excited people glad to forget in the
distractions of play, of speculation and of good cheer the woes of the
country and their own degradation. Some were eagerly buying tickets that
would entitle them to seats in the Theatre de la Republique, only a
hundred paces distant; others were buying the daily papers. Some were
promenading with that careless gayety that never deserts the French even
in their darkest days, while they insolently eyed the shameless women,
who, with bold gaze and naked shoulders, stood there endeavoring to
attract the attention of the passers-by. Others rushed to the gambling
saloons, already dreaming of the stroke of good fortune that would
enlarge the rolls of assignats with which their pockets were filled.

Some promenaders approached each other with mysterious proposals, and
afterwards repaired to the garden where they could converse undisturbed.
It was there that many confidential interviews were held, it was there
that the most diverse hopes had birth; it was there that the Royalists,
the friends and the relatives of the Emigres or of suspected persons
incarcerated in prison plotted for the return of the Bourbons or for the
deliverance of the poor wretches whose lives hung upon a thread. There,
too, the spies in the employ of the Committee of Public Safety, or of
the Commune, flitted about, trying to discover any secret that might be
hostile to the Republic. Sometimes gloomy visaged men or women with pale
and anxious looks were seen hurr