Page:A French Volunteer of the War of Independence.djvu/234

210 some of your delusions, and induced you to reconsider the matter, and afterwards you could have done as you thought fit."

He told me many things which astonished me, even after the events which I had seen;—especially when he assured me that at the time when we believed all Europe, even including Russia, to be preparing to take up the King's cause by a general armament, Prussia had, through Ephraim, a Jew of Berlin, proposed an offensive and defensive alliance with France, the sole condition being that Louis XVI should send the Queen back to Vienna. I do not refuse to believe that this proposal was really made, but it seems strange that the avowed enemies of this unfortunate Princess should intentionally or unintentionally have tried to save her from the scaffold.

My old comrade of the War of Independence, who had thrown himself, along with his old general, into the vortex of the Revolution, had afterwards retired to the United States, where like the wise man