This attempted suicide, to tell the truth, was only half believed in, and many people, having heard of the things that were done in the Temple and the Prefecture, believed that Bouvet had been assisted in his strangling, just as they had put Picot’s feet to the fire.  What gave colour to these suspicions was the fact that Bouvet’s hands “were horribly swollen” when he appeared before Real the next day, and also the strange form of the declaration which he was reputed to have dictated at midnight, just as he was restored to life.  “A man who comes from the gates of the tomb, still covered with the shadows of death, demands vengeance on those who, by their perfidy,” etc.  Many were agreed in thinking that that was not the style of a suicide, with the death-rattle still in his throat, but that Real’s agents must have lent their eloquence to this half-dead creature.

However it may have been, the government now knew enough to order the most rigorous measures to be taken against the “last royalists.”  Bouvet had, like Picot, only been able to mention the house at Chaillot, and the lodging in the Rue Careme-Prenant, and Georges’ retreat was still undiscovered.  The revelations that fear or torture had drawn from his associates only served to make the figure of this extraordinary man loom greater, by showing the power of his ascendancy over his companions, and the mystery that surrounded all his actions.  A legend grew around his name, and the communications published by Le Moniteur, contributed not a little towards making him a sort of fantastic personage, whom one expected to see arise suddenly, and by one grand theatrical stroke put an end to the Revolution.

Paris lived in a fever of excitement during the first days of March, 1804, anxiously following this duel to the death, between the First Consul and this phantom-man who, shut up in the town and constantly seen about, still remained uncaught.  The barriers were closed as in the darkest days of the Terror.  Patrols, detectives and gendarmes held all the streets; the soldiers of the garrison had departed, with loaded arms, to the boulevards outside the walls.  White placards announced that “Those who concealed the brigands would be classed with the brigands themselves”; the penalty of death attached to any one who should shelter one of them, even for twenty-four hours, without denouncing him to the police.  The description of Georges and his accomplices was inserted in all the papers, distributed in leaflets, and posted on the walls.  Their last domicile was mentioned, as well as anything that could help to identify them.  The clerks at the barriers were ordered to search barrels, washerwomen’s carts, baskets, and, as the cemeteries were outside the walls, to look carefully into all the hearses that carried the dead to them.

* * * * *

On leaving Chaillot, Georges had returned to Verdet, in the Rue du Puits-de-l’Hermite.  As he did not go out and his friends dared not come to see him, Mme. Verdet had instituted herself commissioner for the conspiracy.