"
"And after that! If you take Montaignac, what will you do then? Do
you suppose that the English will give you back your Emperor? Is not
Napoleon II. the prisoner of the Austrians? Have you forgotten that
the allied sovereigns have left one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers
within a day's march of Paris?"
Sullen murmurs were heard among Lacheneur's followers.
"But all this is nothing," continued the baron. "The chief danger lies
in the fact that there are as many traitors as dupes in an undertaking
of this sort."
"Whom do you call dupes, Monsieur?"
"All those who take their illusions for realities, as you have done; all
those who, because they desire anything very much, really believe that
it will come to pass. Do you really suppose that neither the Duc de
Sairmeuse nor the Marquis de Courtornieu has been warned of it?"
Lacheneur shrugged his shoulders.
"Who could have warned them?"
But his tranquillity was feigned; the look which he cast upon Jean
proved it.
And it was in the coldest possible tone that he added:
"It is probable that at this very hour the duke and the marquis are in
the power of our friends.
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