IGO TRANSACTIONS CHAT, determined to keep the deed secret even from the XII
- troops engaged in the operation. Except his hro-
ther, and INIarshal Ikigeaud, whose approval Avas the prize he sought for, no one was to know what he did. He contrived to execute both his pur- poses. ' Then/ ho writes to his brother, ' I had
- all the apertures hermetically stopped up. I
' made one vast sepulchre. No one went into the ' caverns ; no one but myself knew that under ' there, there are five hundred bricrands who will ' never again slaughter Frenchmen. A confiden- ' tial report has told all to the Marshal, without ' terrible poetry or imagery. Brother, no one is so ' good as I am by taste and by nature. From the ' 8th to the 12th I have been ill, but my con- ' science does not reproacli me. I have done my ' duty as a commander, and to-morrow I would do ' the same over again ; but I have taken a disgust
- to Africa.' *
The officer who could cause French soldiery to be the unconscious instruments for putting to death five Imndred fugitive men, and who could afterwards keep concealed from the whole force all knowledge of wliat it had done, was likely to be the very persoii for whom Fleury was seeking. He was brouglit back to Paris, and made IMinister of War, with a view to the great plot of the 2d of December. France knows liow well, sooner or later, he answered to Fleury'.s best hopes. He kopt liis counsel close until tlio appointed night, • St Aruan'l's Letters, puMislicd 1>)- his lelntives aft<^r his do.ith.
