Buonaparte received them at night in a small closet of the Tuileries, and requested them to speak with frankness.

"You, sir," they said, "have now in your hands the power of re-establishing the throne, and restoring to it its legitimate master.

Tell us what are your intentions; and, if they accord with ours, we, and all the Vendeans, are ready to take your commands." He replied that the return of the Bourbons could not be accomplished without enormous slaughter; that his wish was to forget the past, and to accept the services of all who were willing henceforth to follow the general will of the nation; but that he would treat with none who were not disposed to renounce all correspondence with the Bourbons and the foreign enemies of the country.

The conference lasted half-an-hour; and the agents withdrew with a fixed sense that Buonaparte would never come over to their side.

Nevertheless, as it will appear hereafter, the Bourbons themselves did not as yet altogether despair; and it must be admitted, that various measures of the provisional government were not unlikely to keep up their delusive hopse.