Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/136

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Napoleon.

others grouped on the platform of the high tower, holding their musket-stocks in air, and expressing by all means employed under similar circumstances their desire of surrendering.

"The result of this so-called victory, which brought down so many favours on the heads of the so-called victors, is well known. The truth is that this great fight did not for a moment frighten the numerous spectators who had flocked to witness its result. Among them were many women of fashion, who, in order to be closer to the scene, had left their carriages some distance away."

V.

THE GIRONDISTS.

Pasquier saw the arrival of the Girondists in Paris; and it is interesting and pathetic to read his account of the hopes with which these men entered on their duties, when one knows how most of them ended on the guillotine. Pasquier had a friend in the Revolutionary party, a M. Ducos, and M. Ducos induced him to remain to breakfast with his fellow deputies from the Gironde. This breakfast is very different from the last supper of the Girondists with which history is familiar—the supper before the wholesale execution of the group:

"All of them were intoxicated with visions of future successes, and they did not take the trouble