ESCAPE OF THE REPUBLICAN EXILES. 107 



ceivable by an angry Frenchman and few nations 

 have more inventive faculties on such topics than 

 his own and pelted them with mire. Du Coudray 

 was astonished above measure at this shift of the 

 popular wind, merely from the difference between a 

 prosperous republican and a fettered and felon one. 

 He ought to have known the nature of liberty and 

 equality better. Every face now naming with 

 patriotic wrath, had, but a short time before, been 

 gazing on him with all the benevolence of a flattered 

 rabble, huzzaing in the train of a popular haranguer. 

 Du Coudray, still confident of his powers of persua- 

 sion, started up and made a speech through the bars 

 of the cage in which he figured through the land, in 

 the style of another Bajazet. 



The speech was incomparably characteristic, a com- 

 pound of egotism, nationalism, civisme, and utter 

 fright. 



"'Tie I 'tis I myself," it began. "'Tis your 

 representative ! though perhaps you do not know me 

 in this cage. I am dragged to punishment without 

 a trial, or even an accusation. My crime is that of 

 defending your liberties and properties," &c., &c. 

 He then finished his commonplaces by charging 

 them with the ingratitude of delivering him over 

 "to his executioners." But the ex-deputy's elo- 

 quence had no other effect than that of inflaming 

 the wrath of his patriotic voters. They scoffed at 

 him in all directions, pelted him with mud, renewed 



