[424]Come, Monsieur, said the police official, I see there is some mistake. What is your name?Enfin, ne pouvant pas distinguer, parmi tant de chemises lesquelles appartenaient Marat, et les tantes du roi persistant nier quelles eussent, derob celles du grand homme, la municipalit dArnay-ci-devant-le-duc, accorda Mesdames la permission de continuer leur voyage aprs les avoir retenues prisonnires lespace de dix jours.
Director
Tallien was the acknowledged son of the maitre-dh?tel of the Marquis de Bercy, but strongly suspected of being the son of the Marquis himself, who was his godfather and paid his expenses at a college from which he ran away when he was [288] fifteen. Already an atheist and a revolutionist, besides being a lazy scoundrel who would not work, he was, after a violent scene with the Marquis, abandoned by him, after which he quarrelled with his reputed father, a worthy man with several other children, who declined to support him in idleness, and threatened him with his curse. Taisez-vous, mon pre, cela ne se fait plus dans le monde, was the answer of the future septembriseur. His mother, however, interposed, and it was arranged that he should continue to live at home and should study in the office of a procureur. Step by step he rose into notoriety, until he was elected a member of the commune of Paris, where he was soon recognised as one of the most violent of the revolutionists.He and Vergennes were said to have wasted the revenues of France, but at any rate he spent money like a gentleman, and when, in 1787, he was dismissed from office, he did not possess an cu.Caresne was a painter and poet whose poems and pictures were bad, but his conversation amusing. He wrote the following verses to Lisette, whose rapid progress and intelligence made her seem to be already passing out of childhood into girlhood:The Marquis was celebrated for his good looks, and was very rich; but her marriage with him was disastrous for the son and daughter of her first husband, to whom she took a violent and unnatural dislike. She sent her son to America to get rid of him when he was thirteen, and when he arrived there he escaped to Canada, took refuge with the Indians, and made them understand that he had been abandoned by his mother and wanted to live with them, to which they consented on condition of his being tattooed all over.M. Auber, jeweller to the Crown, said: You had better fasten a stone to your neck and throw yourself into the river than marry Le Brun.