"Fouche," cried Bonaparte, clinching his fist and raising it threateningly, "Fouche, so sure as God lives, I will have you hanged as a traitor if you have lied!"
"General, as surely as God lives, I have spoken the truth. I came here to show you what I am, and what Regnier is. I have waited here till the whole net of these conspiracies should be spread out and be fully complete. The time has come when I must speak; and now I say to you, general, take some steps, for there is danger on foot!"
Bonaparte, trembling with emotion, had thrown himself into an arm-chair, and took, as was his custom in moments of the greatest excitement, his penknife from the writing-desk, and began to whittle on the back of the chair.
Fouche stood leaning against the wall, and looked with complete calmness and an invisible smile at this singular occupation of the general, when the door of the cabinet was opened, and the Mameluke Roustan appeared at the entrance.
"Consul," he said, softly, "Councillor Real is again here, and pressingly desires an audience."
Bonaparte rose, and threw away the knife. "Real!" he cried in a loud tone.
The man who was summoned immediately appeared at the open door--a tall, grave personage, with a face so pale and distorted that Bonaparte noticed it, despite his great agitation.
"What is it, Real?" he asked, eagerly. "Have you spoken with the condemned man?"
"Yes, general, I have spoken with him," whispered Real, with pale lips.
"And it is as I said, is it not? This Doctor Querolle has only pretended to be able to make great disclosures, only to prolong his own life a few hours. He has poisoned his wife, in order to marry his mistress, and the poisoner is executed."
"General," cried Fouche, almost with an air of joy, "I knew Querolle, and I knew that his wife poisoned herself. Querolle is not a poisoner."
"What is he then, M. Omniscience?"
"General, he is a conspirator!"
"A conspirator!" repeated Bonaparte, and now his troubled face turned again to the councillor. "Real, what do you know? What did the condemned man say to you?"
"Consul, he swore that he was innocent of the death of his wife, but he acknowledged himself a member of a conspiracy, the object of which is to murder General Bonaparte. He asserts that the royalists and republicans have allied themselves; that fifty emissaries of the Count de Lille and the Duke d'Enghien, Pichegru and Georges at their head, have crept into Paris; that they had an interview yesterday with General Moreau, and with the so-called King Louis XVII., who is secreted in Paris, and that at this hour those fifty men are prowling around the streets of the city, and are watching the Tuileries, waiting for an opportunity to kill the First Consul."
The troubled eye of Bonaparte turned slowly from the pale face of Councillor Real to the calm, sagacious face of Fouche, which guarded itself well from expressing any token of triumph and satisfaction.
The consul then walked slowly through the room, and with his foot pushed open the door leading into the great reception-room, in which, at this hour every day, all the dignitaries of the republic were assembled, to receive the orders of Bonaparte.