Scaramouche
“If his movements, gestures, accent and turn of speech, and the very gravity of his bonhomie, suggested a plebeian origin, he yet bore himself with a general air of genial consequence. He was a man to whom wealth had brought assurance and self-confidence and the poise permitted by a sense of security. Nor was this security shaken by the successive earthquakes that disturbed the nation, and in the course of which men of birth and quality were being constantly engulfed. Together with the millions in his safes, there was that which in these unquiet and dangerous times amounted to an even more precious treasure in the shape of records of transactions on behalf of some of the architects of the revolution. There was no party in the State some of whose members had not operated through Benoit and profited by the operations to an extent the revelation of which might imperil their heads. Recommended to him one by another, they had come to regard him as a "safe man". And Benoit on his side knew h...imself for a safe man in another sense, since he held these patriots as hostages for his safety.Benoit could have told the world the precise reason for Dan-ton's anxiety to decree the sacredness of property; he could have explained exactly how the great tribune and powerful apostle of equality was becoming so considerable a landowner in the district of Arcis.MoreLess
Write Review:
Guest
Read Also
7 / 10
9 / 10
User Reviews: