XLVIII

had the most remarkable audacity, seconded by a most powerful organization⁠—a man who has not, perhaps, like yourself seen all the kingdoms of the earth, but who has helped to overturn one of the greatest; in fact, a man who believed himself, like you, one of the envoys, not of God, but of a supreme being; not of Providence, but of fate. Well, sir, the rupture of a blood-vessel on the lobe of the brain has destroyed all this, not in a day, not in an hour, but in a second. M. Noirtier, who, on the previous night, was the old Jacobin, the old senator, the old Carbonaro, laughing at the guillotine, the cannon, and the dagger⁠— M. Noirtier, playing with revolutions⁠— M. Noirtier, for whom France was a vast chessboard, from which pawns, rooks, knights, and queens were to disappear, so that the king was checkmated⁠— M. Noirtier, the redoubtable, was the next morning poor M. Noirtier , the helpless old man, at the tender mercies of the weakest creature in the household, that is, his grandchild, Valentine; a dumb and frozen carcass, in fact, living painlessly on, that time may be given for