rivate property. When
captured, however, they were tried and executed as
highwaymen.--TR.

"Between Mortagne and Rennes, and even beyond, as far as the banks
of the Loire, nocturnal expeditions were organized, which attacked,
especially in Normandy, the holders of property bought from the National
domain.[*] These armed bands sent terror throughout those regions. I am
not misleading you when I ask you to observe that in certain departments
the action of the laws was for a long time paralyzed.

[*] The National domain was the name given to the
confiscated property of the _emigres_, which was sold from
time to time at auction to the highest bidder.--TR.

"These last echoes of the civil war made much less noise than you would
imagine, accustomed as we are now to the frightful publicity given by
the press to every trial, even the least important, whether political
or individual. The system of the Imperial government was that of all
absolute governments. The censor allowed nothing to be published in the
matter of politics except accomplished facts, and those were travestied.
If you will take the trouble to look through files of the 'Moniteur' and
the other newspapers of that time, even those of the West, you will not
find a word about the four or five criminal trials which cost the lives
of sixty or eighty 'brigands.' The term _brigands_, applied during the
revolutionary period to the Vendeans, Chouans, and all those who took up
arms for the house of Bourbon, was afterwards continued judicially under
the Empire against all royalists accused of plots. To some ardent and
loyal natures the emperor and his government were the enemy; any form of
warfare against them was legitimate. I am only explaining to you these
opinions, not justifying them.

"Now," he said, after one of those pauses which are necessary in such
long narratives, "if you realize how these royalists, ruined by the
civil war of 1793, were dominated by violent passions, and how some
exceptional natures (like that of Madame de la Chanterie's son-in-law
and his friend) were eaten up with desires of all kinds, you may be
able to understand how it was that the acts of brigandage which their
political views justified when employed against the government in the
service of the good cause, might in some cases be committed for personal
ends.

"The younger of the two men had been for some time employed in
collecting the scattered fragments of