A DISCOVERY ! 175

had long cultivated it at Valenciennes, and had
given some of the plants to a medical botanist at
Cambray. Having received intelligence from this
friend that these offshoots from his treasured
shrub were flourishing, in a letter addressed to him,
he made use of this expression :—“ Comment vont
nos chers Rhus? Qu’il me tard deles voir!” This
letter, written by an homme suspect, was intercepted
and read before the Revolutionary Committee.
Here was a discovery for these patriotic citizens!
The Empress of Russia was about to join the allied
forces, and Dufresnoy, with his aristocratic ten-
dencies, was in intelligence with that sovereign ;
for they are doubtless the Russians whom he is so
impatient to see; the thing is clearly proved!

Immediately an order of arrest was made out,
and the traitorous physician brought up before the
Revolutionary tribunal of Arras, at that time pre-
sided over by the atrocious Lebon, the monster
who sentenced to the scaffold a quiet and inoffen-
sive citizen, solely because he had in his possession
a parroquet which cried ‘‘ Vive le Roy!” It was
seriously proposed (by the way) to guillotine the
bird as well as his owner, but Lebon’s wife saved
the creature by undertaking that he should be
taught to say “ Vive la Montagne.”

In the hands of this bloodthirsty wretch, Dufres-
noy would have had no chance of escape. His