254 BLANCHE DE BEAULIEU. 
convey her to a place of greater security ; but he reflected that by 
so doing he should probably excite suspicion, and with a deep sigh 
he proceeded slowly on his way. 
About three leagues from the city he stopped at a village to give 
his horse some refreshment, and as he was remounting he fancied 
he heard his own name called. Marceau paused. In a few mo- 
ments he distinctly heard it repeated, and at the same instant a man 
vaulted over the hedge behind him, and, rushing forwards, fell at 
his feet, with only strength to murmur “ Thou art betrayed—she is 
arrested !” It was the faithful Tinguy. ‘‘ Arrested? Who? 
Blanche ?” cried Marceau. 
The man made a gesture in the affirmative: he could not speak. 
He had travelled three leagues on foot to overtake the young Gene- 
ral, and when he reached him his strength was totally exhausted. 
Marceau seemed bewildered; he gazed wildly on the peasant, a 
convulsive shudder ran through his frame, and he repeated vaguely, 
“ Blanche arrested? My Blanche arrested? I see through it all 
now,” he at length murmured, in a hoarse whisper; “ this, then, is 
the motive of my being sent away! I must return instantly to 
Nantes: I will save her, or perish in the attempt! Fool! idiot! 
dupe that I was, to leave her! Blanche arrested? Where, then, 
have they taken her ?” 
Tinguy, to whom this question was addressed, was still lying on 
the spot where he had at first fallen, Every vein in his body appear- 
ed swollen almost to bursting, his eyes seemed starting from their 
sockets ; and on the question being repeated to him he had only 
power to whisper, ‘To the Prison de Bouffays.” 
No sooner were the words uttered than Marceau sprung on his 
horse, and was in a few moments lost tosight. In an inconceivably 
short time he re-entered Nantes, and repairing to the “ Place de 
Cours,” stopped at the door of the house in which the famous (or 
rather infamous) Carrier* resided. With the air of one who ex- 
* Member of the “ National Convention,” and its representative in 
Nantes, whose indiscriminate slaughter and unrelenting barbarities have ren- 
dered his name atrvciously celebrated. The Vendéens, the royalists, even 
those whose only crime was want of zeal in the republican cause, could not 
have a more implacable enemy than Carrier, who was to Robespierre what 
the hyena is to the tiger, and the jackal to the lion. This was the monster 
who, finding the guillotine too slow for his savage purposes, invented “ des 
Noyades,”%a species of barges, with false bottoms, by means of which hun- 
dreds of his victims were drowned at a time. Carrier perished on the scaf- 
fold in the year 1794,—(From Turreau’s Histoire de la Guerre de la Vendée. ) 
